Chapter Text
“Her name is Antonia Boyana Stark, Howard,” said Maria, passing the baby along to her husband. The man snorted and refused to take her in his arms.
“Italian and Bulgarian,” he muttered. His wife nodded and smiled.
“I like it. Boyana means warrior. Go on, Howard, hold her. Isn’t she beautiful?”
“She’s a girl,” he said as if it explained his resentment. Maria supposed it did. “The Stark legacy - what the fuck am I supposed to do with a girl?”
“She’ll be the beauty by your side,” Maria offered. Howard scoffed.
“I don’t need a fucking beautiful piece of shit standing next to me, Maria,” he explained, waving his arms around. “I need a fucking boy to carry on my legacy. The Stark legacy. I don’t see a boy, now do I? Do you? Fuckin hell. I need a drink. Give her to Jarvis, will you? I’m going to a bar.”
“I’d be delighted to keep her with me for a little longer,” Maria murmured, cooing at the baby girl. The infant giggled and shook her tiny fists in the air. Howard wanted to scream. “I’ll get Jarvis to drive me back to the mansion, Howard, how’s that?”
“Fucking hell,” Howard said again and stalked off into the hallway.
Obadiah clapped him on the back as he emerged.
“Well? How is he? Bouncing baby boy, I presume? Strong, like his father. Nice chin, I’m guessing, yeah?”
Howard sniffed and felt like punching a wall.
“It’s a fucking girl,” he said, his voice drawing out on a whine. “A girl, Obie, what the hell am I going to do with a girl?”
“Mm,” Obie said. His voice sounded like a growl. A caged animal, that’s what Howard thought of his business partner. Just waiting to be unleashed. “I don’t know. Maybe she’ll turn out to be good, eh? Keep up her old man’s legacy.”
“Like hell, she will,” Howard replied, biting back a twisted laugh. “Please, Obadiah. Let’s not be irrational.”
“Well,” said Obie, “you still got Cap. You’ll find him, Howard. We’ll find him, and he’ll be your legacy.”
“Yeah, well, for now, I’m stuck with the fucking princess,” Howard said.
He punched the wall.
…
Antonia learned at a very young age to steer clear of her father when he drinks the amber liquid. She could smell it though, the metallic scent, the scent that reminded her of blood and bone and nightmares. She had to be quiet, she had to be a very good, very quiet little girl.
Be a good girl, Antonia.
Screams followed her throughout the mansion, hands would find her, wandering wandering hands, scratching and clawing and holding and pulling and hitting and she learned at a very young age the rules of the world.
She knew more things at a very young age that no other child should know.
Be a good girl, Antonia. Are you a good girl? Are you my good girl?
…
Antonia was four years old and a good girl. Not just a good girl, a very good girl. She was all dark curls and amber eyes and hushed words. Quiet was the word Maria would describe her with. Quiet and beautiful.
Antonia didn’t feel beautiful.
She felt the hand of her father on her shoulder. She felt the burn of words seek into her heart. She felt the way alcohol would feel when forced down her throat, her nose, or flung into her eyes.
She didn’t feel beautiful.
Edwin Jarvis was a beautiful man. He was all wrinkled skin and gray hair and eyes that gleamed with laughter. She liked him, this beautiful man. He put ointment on bruises and band-aids on cuts. He told her fairytales when she couldn’t sleep, tales of princesses who saved themselves from kings who wanted nothing to do with them, princesses who befriended dragons and taught them to be kind. Jarvis was kind, she knew.
One day, the kind and beautiful man put a wrench in her hand. He gave her screws and metal and a hammer and tools - wonderful, glorious, sleek and cold tools. They felt right against her skin, a way to calm the itchiness of a new dress or the sting of a new blow. She was quiet but loud, oh so very loud in her own head, in her thoughts. So she built. She built and built and slipped wires through tiny holes and hammered screws into the loose pieces of her soul and she built.
“Howard, Antonia has something to show you!” Maria called. Her hand rested on Antonia’s shoulder and she quite liked the feeling. “She made something.”
What the fuck am I supposed to do with a girl?
Maria led Antonia into Howard’s workshop and left her there.
Alone, alone, she was all alone.
Her father came trudging down the stairs, took one look at her circuit board, and let out a short-lived huff of a laugh.
“Do you like it?” Antonia asked eagerly, standing on her tippy-toes. He was probably going to be proud of her, she thought. Yes, he’ll be so proud, after all: she made her first circuit board. Jarvis was proud and Maria had nodded her approval, so yes, yes, Howard would be proud.
“Let me see this hunk of shit,” Howard asked said demanded.
He took a swing of that amber liquid. The one that smelled like blood. Blood alcohol.
Be proud of me, Antonia thought and handed him the circuit board.
“I worked very hard on it,” she added.
“Did I ask you to speak?” Howard roared, shoving the glass in her face. Antonia shook her head and looked down at her feet.
“No, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“This is shit, Antonia,” he slurred and smashed the board onto the concrete floor. He kicked and kicked and kicked with his black work boots (she became all too familiar with these black work boots) until it was nothing but flecks of green and detached pieces. She let a whimper escape her throat.
Her 54th mistake.
“Get over here,” Howard growled, grabbing her wrist and dragging her to the back of his workshop and threw open a heavyset metal door. “Stop struggling, girl.”
She obeyed.
Her father pushed her into the room - a room made completely of concrete and metal and adorned with -
with -
with -
“Captain America,” Howard said. He was proud. Not of her, no, but of him. Steven Rogers. Captain Fucking America.
“He’s a war hero, Antonia,” Howard whispered. “You could learn some things.” He left her at the doorway to wander through his things.
Portraits and pictures of the Captain ranged in size, from floor-to-ceiling length to small photographs wedged in crevices. Medals hung from hooks. A prototype of his shield sat proudly on a pedestal in the center of the room.
A map was pinned up on the opposite wall, showing different sections of the world with multicolor pins stuck in random places. Germany, the North Sea, the Arctic, Brooklyn, England, Captain America Captain America Captain America Captain America Captain Fucking America.
He was blond-haired and blue-eyed and he wanted you for the army and he was punching Hitler in the face, which made him a hero, and he was standing beside a brown-haired brown-eyed boy (Bucky Bucky Bucky, who also fell into an icy death) and they were smiling. Arm around each other’s shoulders, they were smiling.
“When I find him,” Howard murmured (maybe to himself, maybe to her, she wasn’t sure), “It’s gonna be my legacy. He’s going to be my legacy. Not you and your shitty circuit board. Do you understand that?”
She didn’t answer.
55th mistake.
Howard turned on her, fingers into fist, red white and blue flashing in his eyes. “I said, do you understand that?”
She answered before he could get to her, before he could unwrap that fist and grab her, grab her, grab -
“Yes sir,” she said. She didn’t look him in the eye. (Staring him down was her 32nd mistake, and she’d learned since then.)
Howard relaxed a little.
“Good,” he panted. “Now go. Leave me with him.”
Howard was all crazed eyes and teeth stained with liquor and wild, untameable fists. He was hairs-on-end and sharp knives and sharper words. He was sir, and she was Antonia, and that was all she would ever be.
…
She was five, and she realized the consequences of sticking around downstairs for a little too long. A little too long past dinner, a little too long into the night. She was five, and she realized the consequences of sticking around downstairs after Jarvis had gone to bed, after Maria had left for her own room, after Jarvis had gotten his first drink in, then his second, then his third, then -
“Come here, little girl,” Howard slurred, waving her over. “Come out from that corner of yours.”
Hesitantly, she stepped out from the shadow of the staircase and approached her father. She was dressed in the little pink flannel nightgown Maria had gotten for her, another piece of clothing that made her want to tear it off her skin.
“Come on, don’t be shy. Get over here, you little shit.”
His voice is kind.
His eyes were not.
But she was young and naive, and this was her 65th mistake (the first in a few months), and she didn’t know any better, and his voice was kind. He was nice.
She went over to his leather chair, the firelight highlighting the creases in his face, and sat down next to him. He sloshed the amber liquid and the scent of blood wafted up her nose, but she ignored it.
(The amber matched her eyes.)
“You wanna be a builder, don’t you?” Howard said. “Come on, sit on my lap. You’re my kid, Antonia. Sit on your old man’s lap.”
“Okay,” Antonia said, a little too happily, and did as he said.
“You wanna be a builder?” he asked again, hands on her arms. He wasn’t so rough and she liked it. “Don’t be shy about it. Jarvis has told me all about what you build in that room of yours. How smart you are. How intelligent you are. He says you’ve got potential.”
She winced at how the words spat from his mouth.
“Follow me,” he said after a moment or so, and put her back on her feet, then headed to his workshop.
Suddenly she was afraid.
Suddenly she realized how achingly alone she was.
Suddenly she wanted Jarvis.
Suddenly -
“Let’s build something,” Howard suggested. She didn’t like how his voice sounded. She didn’t like the way his lip curled. She didn’t like -
“If you’re so fucking smart and so fucking intelligent and you’ve got such fucking potential, let’s build something. You and I. Father and daughter, eh?”
“Okay,” she said. But did she actually say it? She was such a quiet girl, though her head was very loud.
Howard smiled and kneeled down to her level. “I’m excited,” he said and patted her shoulder. He stood. “Give me one moment. Stay right there, Antonia, and don’t move.”
Her 66th mistake.
“Let’s build a machine,” Howard said when he returned, wielding an iron crowbar that had a red hue to it. He gripped it loosely, hands covered in protective gloves. “Go on, grab it. It’s okay, it won’t bite. I just need you to hold it while I go get more supplies. Two hands now, come on.”
She did.
She grabbed it.
67th mistake.
Her hands didn’t feel like hers anymore. They were the product of fire, and the fire was her, and there was something burning its way through her veins. She smelled something burning and was a bit confused because it didn’t smell very nice. Usually, whenever Jarvis grilled something it always smelled very good, because he added herbs and spices and only grilled the best pieces of meat.
No, this was something much more rotten, and she couldn’t smell any herbs or spices. She must be fairly close to the fire because the fire was her, and she was the fire, and something burned but she couldn’t figure out what.
She dropped the iron bar and she looked down at her charred hands, pink and red and everything in between.
“Aw, hey, that’s cheating,” Howard protested. He picked it up and handed it to her (68th mistake) again and she took it and there it was -
The fire, the fire, forged in fire. Her hands didn’t feel like hers anymore. Something was burning, she could smell it, she could feel it, and -
“Take it, Antonia. Take it from my hands.”
(69th mistake.)
“Pick it up, Antonia.”
(70th mistake.)
“Take it.”
(71st mistake.)
“Are you slow? You see what I’m handing you? Take it.”
(72nd mistake.)
“Take it.”
(73rd mistake.)
“Take it.”
(74th mistake.)
“Take it.”
(75th mistake.)
The next morning, kind and beautiful Jarvis found her in the corner of Howard’s workshop, staring at the iron bar that still was held tightly in her hands. He pried it from her fingers and picked her up, picked the tiny child up, picked her up and wiped her tears and wrapped her hands in thick gauze and hid her from Howard for the next two months.
Her hands were no longer hers.
They were wrinkled and scarred and mangled like something had taken the skin and ripped it right off.
She wore gloves after that.
…
Right before she turned seven-years-old, she decided she wanted to know how to fly.
Of course, this was improbable and impossible. Flying was for birds, and she was not a bird, but she liked to pretend she was. Liked to climb to the highest point in the mansion and spread her arms wings and fly.
The only solution for not-flying was to drive, and although she was six years old, she decided to build a motorbike, like the one Howard drove.
She managed to create a V8 motorbike engine and spent her spring days covered in grease and muck and bruises from (fists fists fists) bumping up against tools.
“Jarvis, look!” she cried with glee, and Jarvis smiled and took a quick picture and ruffled her hair and told her how proud he was of her.
Howard destroyed it before she could finish the entire motorbike.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he yelled. His breath stank of blood alcohol. “So fucking useless.”
“I built something,” Antonia protested, her voice failing.
She was a quiet girl but was very loud in the head.
“I think it’s cool.”
“It’s shit is what it is,” Howard barked, throwing an access piece against the wall. “Goddamnit, Antonia, goddamnit. I can’t wait until I finally find Steve and -”
“And what?” Antonia shouted.
She was a quiet girl but was very loud in the head.
This was her 82nd mistake.
“What are you going to do then? Make him the son you never had? I’m sorry, Howard. I’m sorry I’m not -”
She wasn’t prepared for the blows that followed. Looking back, she knew she should’ve been.
She should’ve been prepared for the kicks to her ribs. She should’ve been prepared for the fingers wrapped around her neck. She should’ve been prepared for the slaps and the punch to the face.
“I’m sending you to fucking boarding school so you can get the fuck out of my face,” Howard shouted. He was all sharp knives and sharper words.
Antonia was a quiet girl but was very loud in the head.
She was thick black curls and amber eyes (like the blood alcohol) and a very loud, very peculiar mind. She dreamed of flying and dreamed of love, although she didn’t really know what it meant. She dreamed of grease and flowers and dreamed in music, dreamed in loud songs that made her feel.
She dreamed of him being proud.
She dreamed of her being loved.
After all, Antonia means praiseworthy, means beautiful.
But Antonia wasn’t beautiful.
No, not at all.