Work Text:
In hindsight, Tony should’ve have seen it coming. Nothing ever good happened around Christmas. To be fair, though, he’d just been a kid, plagued with nightmares.
Nightmares of being in a space so open that he felt claustrophobic; the inky darkness closing in and the constant ringing of an unanswered phone. Please, please don’t pick up. You don’t need to hear me dying.
Nightmares of colors streaking out from his fingertips and changing the world, but it was never for the better. Unless he lives. Please, God, grant me this one last thing.
They were nightmares that left him screaming for his parents, that had Maria kissing his brow and murmuring softly, had Howard rolling his eyes and sneering from behind a tumbler of amber liquid.
“Stark men don’t cry, Tony. We’re made of iron.”
“Technically, it’s a gold aluminum alloy,” Tony says as he sniffles and wipes his nose.
He doesn’t know where those words had come from, but they’d earned him a bruising backhand and a ban from Howard’s lab for a week for sassing. He’d cried into his mother’s dressing gown as she’d returned him to his bed.
The nightmares continued, but Tony learned to be careful about screaming too loudly, of alerting his father. He learned to sleep with one pillow tucked in his arms, so when he inevitably dreamed of falling - Always falling. Please someone catch me-, he’d wake up already screaming into his pillow. It muffled the noise and provided a good enough place to wipe his tears.
He might not have been strong enough not to cry, but he was smart enough to hide it.
At ten years old, the pills were a last resort. Sneaking them from his mother’s medicine chest, he learned one was enough to get him to sleep quickly, but not sleep through the nightmares. Four pills had him throwing up violently in his bathroom. He yelled at the butler for spoilt milk, and he refused assistance when the maids came.
His mother had gone on trip to Aspen for one of her fundraising benefits, so when the maid had found Maria’s prescription bottle in Tony’s room, she’d gone to Howard.
“Do you know what they do to thieves some countries, boy?!” Howard snarled. Never let it be said that, even raging drunk, Howard didn’t take care of his kid. He dragged Tony, wide-eyed and too scared to protest, down to his lab. The other hand kept turning the pill bottle round and round. His stride was strong, commanding, as unyielding as his grip around Tony’s wrist.
“Answer me!” He rounded on Tony in the lab and Tony tried to shrink back.
“I’m sorry!” Tony shouted. “I’m sorry! I was just- I just wanted to sleep, Father! I j-”
Howard’s furious expression softened, features smoothing out until Tony, trembling and uncertain, began to relax a little. Howard tilted his head and contemplated his fingers around Tony’s slender arm. He sighed and Tony recoiled a little with the odor of alcohol.
“They take their hands, Tony,” Howard murmured, thumb stroking over Tony’s wrist. “That’s their penalty for stealing. You steal, you get caught, you pay the price.”
If you asked Tony today what he’d said in response, Tony wouldn’t be able to tell you. It was a blur of begging, terror, and tears. At ten years old, he’d been no match for his father. So when Howard hauled Tony over the metal press, Tony had pissed himself in fear.
The machine was loud when Howard turned the crank. It cogs and wheels creaked and squealed and Tony had cried and fought against Howard’s hand, struggling to get away until the first touch of cold -Too cold in the ice. We have to get him out of there! Welcome to the new world- metal made Tony freeze. His eyes widened, pupils dilating until there was barely any brown left.
“Daddy, please! Please! Ple-” Over and over has the metal pressed down and Tony could hear his bone grinding down against the plating. It was too tight, too hard, too much. His fingertips were were white at the other end already as Howard finally stepped back. His posture swayed a little and he shook the pill bottle in front of Tony’s face.
“Be thankful I didn’t take your hand, Tony. Now, stay here and think about what you’ve done.” He placed the bottle on the table across from the machine and swaggered out.
Tony struggled towards the lever, too far from the controls to reverse the press. He screamed and screamed, begging for his father, for anyone, to not leave him alone, to please get him out. And then, he just didn’t.
Tony let his legs give out, let himself hang from the press, let his weight pull on the bone and muscles caught between the metal. He hung there, knees barely scraping the floor, staring at the linoleum. He hung there, and he learned.
Never trust anyone.
Tony doesn’t remember passing out, but it was the sound of tables scraping out of the way, a cool hand on his forehead, and the roaring agony that ripped through his arm that brought him back to consciousness.
His mother was cradling him. He blinked blearily up at her chin, her soft perfume wafting as she yelled. Howard was just out of the corner of Tony’s eyes, on the phone and rubbing his face as he paced.
“Mama?” He asked, voice hoarse with pain. “Mama?”
Maria cradled him closer, kissing at his forehead and wiping at his cheeks.
“It’s going to be okay, mimmo,” she cried. “Shh, my sweet baby, it’s going to be okay.”
And what could Tony do, but believe her? He closed his eyes and let the darkness of his nightmares take him away.
~~
This wasn’t right. Tony curled up on his side in the hospital bed. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen.
“What was supposed to happen, mimmo?” Maria asked gently, stroking soft fingers gently across his brow and temple.
“I was supposed to save the world,” Tony slurred, sedated. He stared at crisp white sheets above his wrist and wriggled phantom fingers.
“You will, Anthony,” Maria replied, voice heavy with sorrow. Tony doesn’t trust her. When they brought him market prosthetics, he rejected them all. Howard never visited.
Eventually, they released him from the hospital, and Maria was there to take him home. The ride was silent, and he sat close to his own window. His wrist stayed cradled to his stomach as his phantom fingers tapped out the Requiem Mass against his side.
Once they were settled back at home, Tony stood his ground, chin lifted. He doesn’t go back to school that year. Or the next. In the span of those two years, Tony thought he might have seen Howard a grand total of less than ten times.
He tested into MIT when he turned twelve. And by the time the first day of the school year rolled around, he’d made himself his own prosthetic. It was silver and more Terminator than functional, but it was the first project he’d finished on his own that worked flawlessly.
He and his new friend Rhodey got a kick out of playing quarters with it. It wasn’t usually much of topic after a while, though. Until one night, two-thirds of the way into a suitcase of beer, Rhodey rolled his head along the side of the bed to look at Tony.
“I think it should be red,” he said.
Tony blinked and put his hand in the air above them. The thin, metal fingers spread out and wriggled. “Why red?”
Rhodey frowned and said; “I feel like it’s more your color, you know? Red. Bright. Eye-catching.”
“Red,” Tony hummed.
Yeah, I can fly.
“I like it.”
~~
Six years later, Tony ended up at the Superhero Academy. He’s pretty sure it was only because he’s rich. Let’s be honest, they all knew he wasn’t a hero.
So he sat for his Academy ID photo, working out the latest kink in the repulsor in his hand.
“Wow, you really are a genius!” The photographer chuckled as he settled back behind the camera.
Tony smirked into the camera, letting his hand rest and, for a moment, his red fingers tapped out the Requiem Mass.
He learned enough over the years that if he played his personality large and loud, no one paid too close attention to the gauntlet that never left his hand. They don’t ask the questions they should, and they never look too closely to the dark circles under Tony’s eyes.
When Captain America came to the Academy, Tony’s heart stopped. Seeing the legend in real life was intimidating and amazing and Tony might have just been a little in love.
“Welcome home, Cap,” he said.
“Don’t you think this is all a little strange, Tony?”
And Tony’s thrown back in time to ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen’, ‘Please, God, let me have this one thing.’
And the nightmares of a colorful gauntlet and a wish so powerful that the world changed.