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To say that Tony wasn’t doing well was an understatement. Don’t get him wrong, he was trying to be better. For Charlie.
Who I failed.
Who’s gone.
Who was taken from me.
He just didn’t have any reason to live anymore. The pressure from Obie wasn’t helping either. So he started drinking again. He had quit when Charlie was born. To be better.
But now there’s no point.
He had no one. Charlie. Jarvis. His mom. Gone. Pepper, Rhodey, and Obie were there of course. They said he could talk to them whenever. They just didn’t understand.
So he threw himself into the booze, the sex, the parties. To forget.
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“Wait, you’re being serious?”
Tony slammed his hands on his worktable. “You’re not fucking with me right?”
“I’m fully, completely serious Tony. The girl is sure, and we did a background test. We’ve prepared for this. We’ll just pay her for her silence and child support, then we won’t have to even think about it.” stated Obadiah, ever the image of indifference.
“I have a goddamn child! It’s not going to go away with money!” Tony exclaimed, a mixture of fear and excitement.
“Okay, then here’s what we are going to do.” Obadiah sat across the table, linked his fingers together, and leaned back. “We’ll meet Elizabeth, get a DNA test and go from there. Oh and I’m doing the talking.”
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Then Afghanistan happened, and he created Iron Man. He felt like he was actually doing something good for the world. Obadiah’s betrayal stung, but he got over it.
What happened after is history. Palladium poisoning. Aliens attacked New York. He flew into a wormhole, ready to put his life on the line. He survived, and received more nightmares and panic attacks in return. The Mandarin. Sokovia. Ultron.
But he had a team, regardless of how broken it was. A group of misfits, grouped without warning. Earth's Mightiest Heroes, better known as the Avengers. They couldn’t understand his pain either. They tried to, but they all had their own problems. But he felt like he was getting better. Over time, the grief dulled from that sharp pain to a blunt, soft pain that was always there, never gone.
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Obadiah and Tony visited Elizabeth at her home, which was in the middle of nowhere. No one was to know where they went, or why. If word got out, there would be chaos. The girl would have no privacy, and neither would they. The tabloids were always searching for drama, and they found a lot of that around billionaire Tony Stark.
Elizabeth was whip smart and beautiful. She had no family, or no partners. She had gone to a science convention in New York to get out of her boring, small town life. She met a very charismatic, but drunk Tony Stark there. For some unknown reason, he had taken interest in her, and immediately swept her off her feet. A month after, she figured out she was pregnant. She decided not to tell Stark until the baby was born, just to be sure.
When she opened her door to Tony Stark and Obadiah Stane she was surprised. Granted, she did send a message about her baby, but it was another thing for them to show up unannounced.
But there stood Tony Stark, his signature tinted glasses perched on his nose.
“Hi. Are you Elizabeth Miller?”
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There were moments where it felt like the pain was gone. When he was laughing alongside his team. When he was saving people. When he had Pepper. But she eventually left, not able to deal with the broken man that he was.
And then his team left too. The Accords tore them apart. The lingering tensions that were still there after Ultron, intensified. Tony couldn't bear to kill any more people. He couldn't trust himself. He couldn't trust his team to operate of their own anymore either. Tony had tried, tried, to pick up the pieces, to keep the team together. Nat’s betrayal drove a knife into his heart, widening the cracks. Then came Siberia.
Barnes killed my mom. And Steve knew.
That betrayal was the final blow. His heart was already shattered before the shield drove through it.
I have no one. No one cares whether I die. So maybe I should.
And he did.
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A fifteen year old boy picked up a newspaper on the ground. A backpack was slung around his shoulders, his only belongings. To everyone else, he was just a regular high schooler on the way to school. What they didn’t know was that he had nowhere else to go, no family, no one. All dead. Gone. What they also didn’t know was that at nights he swung around Queens in a makeshift suit as Spiderman, although that hadn’t happened recently. The suit was stuffed at the bottom at his backpack, along with a wad of money.
Fucking Parker Luck.
He started walking to the bus stop. He was getting the fuck out of Queens.
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TONY STARK DECLARED DEAD: IS HE REALLY?
6 months ago, Tony Stark aka Iron Man, went missing from the public during what the media dubbed as the ‘Civil War’ between the Avengers. No one knows what happened, except that Pepper Potts released a statement three months ago that Tony Stark had passed away.
No details have sprung up since then, and there is speculation that he might’ve been murdered by our own Captain America, who is now a fugitive on the run. Others say that he was kidnapped, or had been abducted by aliens. There are also rumors that he faked his own death. Our sources say…..