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The Avengers, Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, and all situations and characters thereof, belong strictly and solely to Marvel Comics. This is a fan-work, meant for enjoyment only, and not for any material profit.
Here is the simulation Tony never shows anybody:
Two men, head-to-head. They’re not arguing, that might involve some real feelings being shown here, by at least one of them. This is different. The old man carps. He carps like he’s done it a thousand times before. Which he has. The boy uses sarcasm. It’s a defense mechanism he’s practiced about a jillion times, that almost, but never quite feels like it really works. Grumpy old guy finishes, then he goes out.
“He does miss you when you’re not here,” the lady at the piano tells the boy. Does she mean what she says? Does she even really hear what she’s saying?
This is from the public version. The other one diverges from it right about here. Maybe you’ve seen the public version? That’s the one where the mother goes, “You’re going to miss us,” and she tells her son, “This is the last time we’re all going to be together, go to him, Tony, tell him how you feel, while you still can.” Boy goes to the old man, after that. He tells him things that he does feel, but they’re not the only things that he feels. “I love you, Dad,” he says, and the mom kisses him, kind of like it’s a reward. Then they both leave.
The only thing that’s 100% true in this version is that stiff little bit of resistance in Young Tony, when he’s receiving his mother’s kiss. Did you even notice that? Most people don’t. Private version is way different. Half written by Tony… No, not really, Loki wrote most of it, but it’s Tony’s feelings. Here’s how that one goes:
Mama’s at the piano: She’s singing that song she loves, full of sugar-coated memories, perfect reflection of her sugar-coated life. Then the old man comes in. He ulls the blanket off the boy on the sofa. He doesn’t bother saying anything, but, “Wake up,” says the mom. “Wake up and say good-bye to your father.”
Kid gets up off the sofa. Then the old guy says something critical, which was always his way. Kid responds with his usual sarcasm. There’s too much feeling in the sarcasm, even now so many years later, it frustrates Tony that he can’t respond with indifference he’d like to. But when was anyone ever indifferent to Howard Stark?
Little squabble between the two men? Mama doesn’t even look. Where does she go when they do this? What sweet little pretend-world is she hiding in?
Then after that is the part where the old man goes out of the room. Mama starts lecturing Young Tony about what he owes his dad… What he owes both of the parents. This is the part where a good son would knuckle under, and do what he was told.
If you knew how many tries it took, before Tony got this part right! Tony Stark, who can pull tech-miracles… out of his asshole, basically. Who could easily create seven incredible inventions before breakfast every morning, who can always chat a girl into bed, and can usually talk Pepper out of being mad at him. Writing this part took him a year. Just getting it even sort of right, even with all of Loki’s help…
He cried when he had it right (and then he hated himself for crying).
“Why do you take his side?” In this version, you never see Howard. Some day Tony’s going to have to do a Howard-centric version of this, because god knows, he’s got feelings he needs to express about his father. This one is the version with his mother, though.
“Why do you always have to take his side?” Young Tony asks his Mama.
She’s just sitting there, with that perfect knot of grey-blond hair, and the perfect suit, and the perfect, composed face. “I don’t understand, dear,” she says.
That’s the problem, is she doesn’t. She lives in a closed world, like a little box. It’s a closed Maria-box, inside her bigger universe that is all Howard Stark. There’s no space in there for anything else, not even a son.
“Mom, you always took his side…” Long, long hours of drafting. He tried grabbing her, but it felt like a sacrelige. It also felt like even that wouldn’t break through into her closed little world.
“Mom, look at me.”
Cool-and-closed, Maria looks.
“Mom, I am what you two made me, look. I’ve got Dad’s talent, I’ve got his addictive personality. What do I have that’s from you, Mom? What?”
Loki wrote this version of the script. “But it’s not realistic,” Tony told him. “People don’t talk that way, and besides, I don’t think Mom…”
Slim-pale hand, covering Tony’s mouth. “None of this is realistic,” Loki says. “It’s a computer simulation. Just try it, it Tony.”
Tony tried it. Credit due to the supervillain currently plotting Ragnarok: It worked.
“Mom,” Young Tony says, “what did you give me? What do I have, that came from you?”
Would the tears really have been slipping down her cheeks if he’d actually said that to her, that night, when he was still just a kid, and they said good-bye for the last time? Would she really have looked down, and would she have said, “Tony, I… I don’t know”?
Fantasy. Nobody talks like that. And cillege kids don’t talk like Loki’s scripted Young Tony, this is all just a fiction; it’s putting faces onto feelings he’s been suppressing for his whole life.
“I don’t know, Tony,” Scripted-Maria murmurs. “I never thought about it, to tell you the truth, I never… Tony, all I’ve been trying to do is keep the peace, you see that, don’t you?”
“You mean you’ve been catering to Dad, so he wouldn’t cause a scene…” -- “This feels like blame,” Tony told Loki, when he got to this part of the script. “I don’t want to blame her,” he said, “none of this was her fault.”
A look of dry fondness, shining from green supervillain eyes. “And I suppose it was your fault?” A bitten, black-painted nail jabs at the script. “Keep reading, Tony.”
He kept reading. --
“...You’ve been catering to Dad my whole life,” Young Tony says, “and you made me cater to him too. Why, Mom, why couldn’t I just be a normal kid once in awhile?”
“But son, you were…”
Harsh words follow. Words of judgment, put there for a reason by the green-eyed supervillain who wrote this thing: “You know what I remember from my childhood, Mom? I remember every time I touched something, he’d start yelling for you. I remember you shushing me, whenever I’d open my mouth… He hit me one time, Mom, do you know why?”
Mom’s openly crying by now… -- “But she wouldn’t,” Tony told Loki, when he got to this point.
Loki just stared at him. “Finish the script .” --
Mom looks like she’s fading, the whole time Tony’s berating her. All the gold fades out of her hair, and her suit, some pale kind of purple-color, mauve maybe, now looks like dull-grey. “I never knew he hit you, Tony,” she manages. “When? Why?”
“I was making noise, probably.” An angry shrug from Young Tony. “Maybe I was going to get fingerprints on one of his precious models, or I don’t remember what it was. What does it matter? You didn’t know, and you wouldn’t have protected me if you had known.”
She stares at him (her blue eyes also look grey now). “I would have,” she says, but they both know it’s a lie.
“He was always the one that mattered, wasn’t he?” Tony says. “Right up until the end… How do you think it makes me feel that your last words to me, the last memory I have of you, my mother, is you lecturing me one more time, to be nicer to Dad?”
She’s still staring. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.
“He just couldn’t leave me alone, could he? He never could, and he never welcomed me home the way family is supposed to.”
“You came home drunk that night, Tony. You passed out on the couch.”
“I was trying to be him, Mom. You know what makes me maddest about this whole thing?”
Blue eyes that look grey, staring out at him from a face that also looks grey too, now. “I don’t know if I want to hear what you’re going to say, Tony,” the mother says in a low voice.
“You don’t.” Flat words, coming from the son. “And I don’t want to say it…” --
This part of the script also took about a million revisions. It doesn’t feel really perfect, even now. First Tony tried writing it. Then, when he’d failed, Loki took over. Tony swore right up until the end, that Loki’s version didn’t feel right to him. But so far, it’s the best either of them has been able to do.
“Mom, I’m not Dad.” Tears clogging holographic Young Tony’s voice as he says it, tears still misting the present-day eyes of Adult Tony, every time he gets to this part of the scenario. “Sometimes I think I’m more like you than I am like him. I like taking care of people, Mom, I got that from you, and it’s way more important than anything I got from Dad.”
No words from the older woman on the sofa. His mother .
“I was trying to make you love me,” holographic Young Tony says, “like you loved him, And I kept failing, because I’m not like him… Mother, if you knew how many bad things I’ve done in my life, because I was trying to be like Dad. Because you showed me that was the way to make people love me… It’s not, Mom, it never was...” --
“This all feels really fake to me.” (Present-day Tony, speaking to his husband.) “Why am I doing this? It’s not like it changes anything, it’s not like she’s really here.”
“Why does anyone do anything?” Present-day Tony’s husband rolls his eyes, gives the sigh of one who suffers fools, but not gladly. “You need closure. Lord knows all those versions where you kow-tow to Howard Stark along with your mother weren’t giving you any, were they?”
Tony, holding the script, tells his husband, “Next we do one with you and your mother. Closure, right?”
“Supervillains don’t need closure,” Loki says. --
Closure. AKA, something that endings are supposed to provide. The ending of this scene is always the same one. First Howard Stark baits his son, then he takes his wife with him to some get-together or another, and he gets her killed. He leaves behind a young son who aspires to be him, to live with that kind of self-centered arrogance, always creating new things, always leaving his messes for others to clean up after he’s gone. And Maria was one of those messes, wasn’t she? She wanted to be Tony’s mother, but what she always was first, was one of Howard Stark’s flunkies.
“Mom, I love you.” Holographic Tony speaks the words that are in real Tony’s heart. “I’ll always love you, even though you were never there for me when I needed you. And I’ll always love Dad too. He didn’t deserve it, but that doesn’t matter with love, does it?”
Holo-Maria shakes her head. “It doesn’t, Tony.” This time, she doesn’t put her arms around him and kiss him, she just reaches out one hand toward him, and he takes it.
“Please don’t leave me, Mom,” he says softly.
“Oh, Tony,” she murmurs, and this time he takes her in his arms, and kisses her. One warm kiss, on a cheek that feels so old and fragile, under his lips.
We’re all such fragile creatures, aren’t we? Fragile, and fallible, and weak. Even Loki, who pretends he’s going to lead an army of monsters against the All-Father, up in Asgard. Even Howard Stark the Great, he of the Expo, and the Arc Reactor, and the little son with the big case of hero-worship, that he never really understood. And as for the mother, she was fragile too. So very fragile, and so very gentle… She’s the one who taught Tony how to really love, even if she wasn’t perfect at it herself. That’s pretty big right there, isn’t it?