Heroic Histrionics

I mused on this one for a while, months even, as to how Tony would have changed as a woman in the MCU.

This has given me the full name of Natasha Antonia Stark. Depending on how much she likes you depends if she gives you leave to use any part of her first name. She considers it more private and uses Toni in public circles since it’s more gender ambiguous and she always liked that. Close friends get leave to call her Tasha, though this habit drops off sharply after meeting our lovely Russian Natasha.

As for the timeline itself. Her parents still would have died, her dad still would have been a jerk about her, though for slightly different reasons, and her mom would have tried, and unfortunately failed, to get more involved in her life. The woman never understood why her little girl wouldn’t sit still and get away from the tech for five minutes so that her mother could try and get her on socially acceptable dates.

She still progressed through her schooling just as quickly, one thing that Howard really approved of, and actually noticed enough to override her mother on when the woman wanted to keep her with her age peers.

Obadiah got frustrated with her a whole lot faster, in large part because he didn’t like that she took over the company as soon as she was legally allowed instead of having the cushion of a few years. That she was still a party girl and shamelessly enjoyed partners of any gender just riled the man up more.

Unfortunately for him, his habits put her on edge, and by the time things came to a head, years ahead of when Afghanistan would have come around the first time, closer to early 2002 than 2008, and been about another weapon entirely. It would have been seen as a staggering blow in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, being so close on the heels of them, and it would have fueled the conflict to more of a frenzy that Obadiah would take advantage of.

Her time in the cave was no less horrific, and thankfully she was seen as a thing, not a woman, and came away unscathed aside from the shrapnel as she went about creating her first reactor. Yinsen, sadly, still managed to get himself in trouble, though in this timeline, he died knowing that his family was safe, not dead.

When she came back, Obadiah was not well pleased and knew that the public would be much less understanding of the change of policy because the nation was still reeling. Thus, pulling out of government contracts whole cloth was not an option, and instead of announcing anything, she eroded Obadiah’s position enough that he attacked her later in the year after she’d managed to secure and get her first suit built.

It was not pretty, but it was also quiet, and the man’s death was covered under a car crash before SHIELD could even catch wind of it. JARVIS helped, and it was one of his first major hacking jobs on her behalf.

From there, she quietly started to sort out Iron Man’s situation and found it hilarious that people decided she must be male just because the suit didn't have prominent breasts or hips. She’s a slender woman and speed was more of value than bulk. She didn’t try to correct the public, and steadily closed down all military contracts she could get her hands on, switching what she could to defensive equipment and gear, as well as medical apparatuses.

The program that Sam was involved in, because of this, got a lot more attention than previously, and Toni got involved, fixing a few defects in the initial design that were not otherwise caught. Riley did not survive, unfortunately, but his death was no longer due to crashing from the sky.

She became aware of the Palladium issue within a year of her return, and this time, there was no SHIELD hovering over her shoulder the way they had to her male counterpart. The solution was still found. Since it lived in her office, it was actually playing with the figures that lived in the expo model that made her notice the pattern, but the margin was much narrower than it had been for her male counterpart and the effects had almost become permanent. She’d put Pepper in her will to take her company, but she didn’t hand it over, being much more possessive of it due to her father’s resistance to letting her into it in the first place when she was young.

She became aware of the Hulk situation weeks after she resolved her own issues, much too late to do anything about it, but she started her own search, wanting to keep an eye on a brilliant contemporary if she could find him.

By 2008, she’d managed to finally alert SHIELD to her heroing status, had the nebulous joy of persistent babysitting by Coulson working on four years, closed down the weapon division of her company, and got total control of the situation without alarming the public or the board.

Then Hammer tried to get involved and it was just not pretty, though the Vanko situation was years out, at that point, and the man did not have the support he did in canon, leading to a much sloppier, and one-sided, situation. It was only after this happened that she even considered giving one of her suits to anyone else, given that the military finally tracked the source of them to her at long last, which was mostly due to someone asking her, flat out, if she knew who was in the suit.

She’d said yes, that was her, but she was just fine remaining Iron Man, thank you. 2008 was an eventful year, though this time, when Rhodey got the suit, it was given as a gift a bit more openly. The Senate hadn’t had to get involved, though there was more than a bit of grief given over the fact that only Rhodes could use the suit at all.

She was there when Steve was recovered to SHIELD, and part of that was because she’d managed to find her dad’s part in its founding while she’d been tearing through any and all old files the man had for a way to save her life in 03 and found out about that. When Coulson had come around, she’d made sure he knew that she knew so that he could make sure Fury knew, and it turned into a lot of knowing.

Which is how it came around that she got to gawk at Steve, and could admit privately that her dad had a reason for being so enamored with the guy. She didn’t stick around though, and the Loki situation went down somewhat similarly to canon, though admittedly with a whole lot less of Steve yelling at Toni. Coulson hadn’t been saved, and she was devastated at losing a good friend.

Other events after that start to fall back in line with canon, though she keeps the reactor here for different reasons, given Killian went after her personally in a sort of ‘round two’ to try and get her aid. It led to her being a lot more intimately involved in the Extremis process. It had the upside of neutralizing the shrapnel, certainly, but reacted strangely to the element of the reactor in her chest, fusing it into her bones during the process. It can no longer be removed at all, though it still has a puts out the same amount of power it had before the incident. Stabilizing Extremis left things… strange for her, and she is both stronger and heals more quickly, as well as her aging seeming to have come to a standstill, if not erasing signs of her advancing age from her entirely. After the stabilization process, she no longer ran the risk of lighting things on fire on accident at least, so she counts it as a win.

She’s just had to shift the designs of her suits around it and has since then settled in to working with her team, dealing with the catastrophes that come knocking. Things shifted to a radical right turn from there, given that she had heightened involvement in SHIELD and it’s simple enough to say that she unearthed Coulson’s being alive because of this, as well as the plans for the Helicarriers, and set about making them more difficult because of the slight implied by Coulson.

Which got the Winter Soldier turned on her, well over a year before he would have been inflicted on Fury. Only Extremis saved her, but it dragged the man to Steve’s attention, and she set about helping him with that instead of focusing on other projects, wanting to sort out what had been her favorite from her father’s stories.

Aside from Peggy Carter anyway.

Okay! After intense discussion with several people I finally figured out how the hell her timeline works! Like, post-Killian I mean. Incorporating up to Civil war timepoint instead of hitting like, 2013 and being fucking clueless. So here is her timeline!!

1970
• Natasha Antonia Stark is born.
1977
• First kidnapping.
1982
• Second kidnapping, sent to boarding school to progress more quickly though grades and high school.
1985
• Goes to MIT.
1987
• Creates Dum-E
• Howard and Maria Stark are killed (it should be noted I always use this timepoint, yes I know it’s not the canon year, all other events remain the same)
• Decides she’s done with schooling and finishes her last degree to leave MIT.
1988
• Takes over Stark industries, against Obadiah’s advisement.
2001
• 9/11 happened.
2002
• Obadiah loses patience and uses the disaster the year before to urge Toni overseas sooner to try to buoy the troops and take advantage of the paranoia.
• She’s promptly captured and subjected to months of horror as per Afghanistan.
• Beginning of the stealthy removal of Stark from making weapons, without breaking any military ties. Instead, emphasis on armor and defensive measures begins. Medical technologies become vastly higher on the priority scale.
• Iron Man begins to be seen around the world, though never in conjunction with Toni Stark. Operations are stealthier.
• A side effect of these actions is that different weapons were used in Sokovia a few years later.
2003
• Conflict with Obadiah very early in the year as he realizes something is up.
• Deadly conflict toward the end of the year in which his death has to be carefully handled and covered to the media as something less hero-ey. JARVIS placed in charge of keeping the information organized as his first major hacking task is likely responsible for SHIELD keeping out of it.
• Toni realizes she’s dying, and makes contingencies for her death. Starts going through all her father’s files and finds out about SHIELD.
2004
• She starts spending unusual amounts of times around the company, much to Pepper’s paranoia at her sudden efficiency.
• This leads to her playing with the expo model a lot and catching wind that something is weird about it.
• Badassium ends up created before anyone but her lawyers have a concrete notion that anything about her is hinky.
2005
• SHIELD finally tracks Iron Man back to Toni in January and proceeds to try to make contact via Natasha. It does not go well, though there is no big reveal as Toni is not dying.
• Toni promptly digs into them more than she initially had in 2003 and finds that they’re maintaining ongoing searches for Rogers. She demands to be kept informed and starts looking into things on her own.
2007
• Regular visits from Coulson ensue when late in the year Hammer and her have a bickering match that leads to a couple explosions at the edge of the city as he tries to show off to her. Without Vanko, it is nowhere near the same kind of production.
• Weapons production in Stark Enterprises has come to a complete and total halt by this point, and all outstanding weapon caches are taken care of to Toni’s awareness.
2008
• Toni outs herself when a determined reporter asks if she has anything to do with Iron Man. She just flat out declares it’s her.
• She openly gives a suit to Rhodey before the first grumbles can turn into the Senate show that male Toni dealt with over a year later in his timeline.
2011
• Toni is present for Steve’s recovery but flees before they can try to wake him, instead hanging around outside the building as he runs by to escape due to her uncertainty of a desire to actually be involved.
• Thor touches down in New Mexico.
2012
• Loki happens and events here are largely unchanged, though Toni had gone out of her way to get a conversation out of Steve before making him aware that ‘Iron Man’ was actually a woman and that Toni was said woman.
• Toni was deeply betrayed to see her friend Natasha at the table.
• That Christmas Killian makes his move on her and everything goes to absolute hell. Her house is blown up, and she’s captured instead of making it to Montana. Killian uses her own body against her with Extremis instead of using Pepper as an intermediary. This results in weird results because of the reactor and she later stabilizes her own changed anatomy once Killian is dealt with.
2013
• Her persistent getting into of SHIELD files finally turns up something she just can’t get behind and she dares to confront someone about it.
• Bucky is promptly sent to kill her around her birthday.
• It fails.
• Toni immediately hunts Steve down to rant about it and informs him of the details of Extremis at that point to explain why she wasn’t currently dead, which hadn’t been previously brought up in the months since it happened. From there, she starts digging into SHIELD for possible answers about the one who tried to kill her, instead running into things that really shouldn’t have been there.
• Two weeks later there’s a hit on Fury when Toni is back in New York digging and doing an impressive job of tearing apart SHIELD’s files.
• Steve ends up with a huge mess on his hands which leads to dealing with Zola’s AI, among other things, Natasha sticking with him through the duration.
• The sudden drop off of contact rings alarm bells for Toni but all efforts to make contact fail, and she sets JARVIS on the situation, heading to DC to find out what the fuck is going on the next morning.
• Toni ends up caught in the SHIELD crossfire when she catches wind of the moved up plans to launch the helicarriers and tries to interfere from inside the installation. It works, but it also really doesn’t, given that the whole underground facility ends up being blown up with her still inside.
• Steve ends up intercepted by Bucky when he and Natasha manage to corner Pierce, leading to a rather vicious fight that has more than a little property damage, and Natasha being alone with Sam while dealing with the WSC.
• By the time Toni manages to free herself of the deathtrap SHIELD became, it was to find Steve had been in the hospital but was already released, but had a new friend who she clearly needed to research after she got five seconds to breathe.
• Thor fights the Dark Elves.
2014
• In the wake of the SHIELD fall Toni ends up starting to build a grid to keep an eye on just about everything, and this starts her personal alert system.
• She also builds the compound for the other Avengers to live in early in the year.
2015
• Toni runs into Wanda for the first time in less than favorable circumstances, and it’s messy, but does not lead to any world catastrophes. The Maximoffs are still not in the best position as they still had a lot of rage, and still ended up with their abilities. This results in the Maximoffs being offered a place on the team once events play out, and arrangements are made to give them legal ground to be in the US.
• Toni manages to track Barnes down to give him a piece of her mind. It’s a little brutal, but she drags him home where she can keep an eye on him and there are no casualties. Steve is a bit less understanding of her methods, but grateful.
2016
• Government oversight is proposed, but given the source of the threats that have been dealt with, it has yet to get traction since nothing can be pinned on the local hero population that is deemed negative.
• Toni has no reason to support the motion, but now that she’s aware that it’s even a thought, has started to discuss with the others how it should be handled if it comes around. She is, however, closely scrutinized for her ‘alarm’ system and has an uphill battle to keep it from being taken over by a government agency.
2017
• Toni digs deep into lingering administration about a registration legislation and manages to get in footnotes about degree of rights, prisoner handling, and what such a registered license would entail. It ends up badly needed, and not a moment too soon, given the Inhuman mess that keeps hitting the news all over the world.