He looks down at his bloodstained hands, dripping with red.
He's not sure whose blood it is, his or Steve's or the worlds.
Everytime he looks there's more.
It first started when he was 8, and father was drunk, sneering, staggering into his room. He dragged him to his workshop, "make something, boy. Make something for me."
He was confused at first, he remembers that. He started to draw the blueprints for a robot, but Howard ripped it out of his hands, "something for me, idiot. Something for Stark Industries." He remembers the moment of clarity with special detail, how he felt the stone drop in his chest, the breath catch in his throat. He was young. But he knew, he knew his father wanted him to kill.
So, he did it.
A bomb.
The day after Howard sold the first batch he saw it. When he woke up, and pushed a hand over his face, he was greeted with a sticky, warm substance smeared by his hand.
He started in surprise, staring at his hands. They dripped with blood, staining the sheets. He ran to Jarvis, holding out his hands and crying, Jarvis only creased his brow, not seeing anything. Tony tried to show him, to tell him, apologise for the blood dropping onto the carpet but he couldn't see it.
(After that, he learned not to tell people about the blood, even when a simple hug leaves them splattered with it.)
It didn't stop until the bomb went out of circuitry a few years later. He only had a few months of glorious reprieve, being able to touch things, write, hold his mother. Those few months, those were the last time he ever really saw his hands clean, not even in the shower. They were clean, so beautiful. He doesn't think he's ever admired his hands as much as he did in those months.
It was glorious...until father asked me to make the next weapon.
It was a machine gun.
The blood from that one was horrible, with the bomb, it always felt slightly singed, burned and cauterized. With this one, it was warm and runny, drops sprinting down his forearms, dripping off the points of his fingers.
He didn't like to hold things after that, have his ghastly curse ruin everything he touched. In the workshop it was alright, in the workshop, he can push it away, focus on whatever he's working on and for a moment or three, it's like the blood was never there in the first place.
He learned not to mind the red staining the white undershirt of his tuxedo at events, not to mind how a flick of his fingers could shower the crowd.
He went to MIT, and shook hands with Rhodey for the first time, watching the blood stain his hand in morbid fascination.
He asked if he was alright, and Tony just laughed.
(A murderer at 8, a murderer at 14.)
It only gets worse as he gets older, Howard asking him more and more, it becomes an unspoken deal, a weapon a week for tuition.
Rhodey leans over his shoulder one day and asks what he's making.
He only smiles, ignoring the red, red blood staining the paper, dripping off his pencil, and says,
"My legacy."
(Rhodey learns not to ask.)
It's the 16th of December, 1991.
The phone rings shrilly. Tony leans over the counter, blood slicking his hold on the coffee mug and picking up the handheld device.
"Rhodes and Stark residence," he says with practiced ease.
"Is this Anthony Stark speaking?" A formal voice asks.
"Yes?" he asks suspiciously, shifting his hold on the phone and ignoring the blood smearing across his cheek.
"I'm sorry to inform you, but your parents, Maria and Howard Stark have passed away. If you wish to make…" he drops the phone with a clatter, sliding down the wall, leaving a bloody handprint as he goes.
Rhodey comes from the other room, freezing for only a second. He hugs him tight, almost painfully, and reaches over for the phone with his free hand. Rhodey holds it to the ear as he muffles Tony's sobs into his shoulder. All the while, Tony stares at his hands, now bleeding with his mother's blood, with his fathers. He can tell, by the way it feels, like unsaid words and anger and everything else in the world.
He gets more used to the blood, especially in his playboy years. At the height of his killing power, the blood is a never-ceasing fountain (don't try to make a wish). He gets used to smearing blood with every kiss, every embrace, every fuck.
He makes business deals with a smile and bucket-loads of charm, shaking hands and posing for pictures, taking a kind of primal revel in the way blood drips from their conjoined hands, dark and foreboding for what's about to come. (a blood pact.)
He meets Pepper and is so afraid to touch her at first, to stain her flawless skin, her ironed white blouse, she is perfect, and his muddied hands cannot mess that up.
Afghanistan happens, and oh god, the blood from his chest and the blood from his hands both stain the white bandage so he cannot tell which is which.
He makes the first Iron-Man suit out of blood, the blood of the soldiers that died for him in that Humvee, the blood of Yinsen, the blood of everyone that's ever truly loved him, bar Rhodey.
He forges the first Iron-Man suit out of fire and pain and blood, and when it's done and he's half-buried in sand, he laughs, just a little, blood disappearing instantly, swallowed by the earth. How the hell did this work?!
When he gets home, inspects his hands in the cleanliness of the house in Malibu, the blood is charred again, charred from the terrorists he burned. Like the first blood, his first murders. It's thick and sluggish and smells like a terrible mix of gunpowder, explosives and the rank cave. He stares at it for far too long, and when Pepper finds him, and asks what he's doing he can only say, "nothing," and smile. (it's been a long, long time since he last talked about the blood.)
It lets up — if only for a moment — when he shuts down the weapons division. And he sees it, his hands, his skin, the blood vanished and he can only stare, trying to take it in. He forgot what they look like, not dirty with all those he'd killed. Then, a sudden question from a journalist brings him back to earth and there's blood again, spreading across his palm like a flower.
When he finds out about the weapons (for sure) it comes, thick and fast, a torrent splattering down his suit as he poses for cameras. They flash, and he wonders if they'll see the blood on film, if they'll take a double look and see 'Merchant Of Death' floating above his head, gory words spelled out in mangled body parts.
Then Obie is dead, and that blood, oh, it's the worst. It's foul and thick and rotten, it smells like betrayal (he's not sure if it's his or Obadiah's.) but it's enough to make him shower and shower, but still it comes, thick and fast, until he's slumped on the bathroom floor, blood pooling around him. Pepper finds him he's-not-sure-how-much-later, and just cups his head in her hands and holds him like that.
He thinks it ironic, for the media to call him Iron-Man when his hands smell like it, thick and metallic. So, when he's standing at that platform, and he can hardly read the words printed on the laminated cards, he decides to fuck it, it's hardly going to be the worse thing i've done, and tells the world, 'I am Iron-Man'.
When he was sick, the blood turned grey-black and so stinking of palladium he's surprised the others can't smell it.
His new assistant, 'Natalie' sees it sometimes, he thinks. He can tell in her eyes, in the way she looks at him sometimes. He just smiles back, playing dumb and pressing a thumbprint to whatever papers she's holding out in front of her.
There's something up with her, and with only a word to J.A.R.V.I.S., he finds out she's a spy. He plays her, spinning a web she trips over without even realising.
It works for him, to be seen as the arrogant-narcissist-billionaire.
(better than 'them' knowing about the blood. About the guilt. About Everything.)
Then everything else happens, the Avengers and New York. When he gets home, he steps out of his suit, too scared to look but does anyway.
It's human blood.
Oh god, it's human blood!
(Tony does not think he should be happy about that) but he is. It's red and smells like copper and isn't black and filthy and disgusting.
He whoops, right there, in the middle of his living room with his now-teammates staring at him. He's high from the adrenaline of battle and laughs and laughs in relief, (he's never been so happy to have the blood on his hands.) Pepper walks in and doesn't even blink, hugging him so tight he thinks he might explode like a tube of toothpaste, but he can only stare at his hands (his wonderful, glorious, red-with-human-blood hands.)
Natasha asks him about it later, and he just shrugs, "just me, you know, eccentric-genius-billionaire shit." she knows it's a lie. (She doesn't push.)
Everything is fine for a while, the blood lessens ever-so-slightly everytime SI helps instead of hurts — intellicrops, medical equipment, green power. And sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, the blood sometimes disappears, just for a moment.
It comes back, full force after Ultron.
He made that.
He killed those people.
It's his fault and he should burn.
Those kids, the ones whose parents died, that was him.
He made them like that, he made countless others like that.
It's relentless, pouring in a horrid red waterfall, blood from Slovakia, from Johannesburg, from Seoul, from every place anyone has ever used his name to hurt others.
When he's lying in the bunker in Siberia, and his chest is bleeding just as hard as his hands, he allows himself to cry, for the first time in a long time. The tears slip down his face quietly at first, then the sobbing starts, harsh and hurting his chest with every inhale. (he deserves this, he thinks.)
When Vison finds him, so many hours later, the tears have dried — or perhaps frozen — and he is cold, so, so very cold.
Vision stands over him, and when he speaks, he almost hears the long-gone voice of Edwin Jarvis."We have to go, young sir."
"The blood," he mumbles, twitching his fingers, caked with frozen blood.
(Jarvis! Jarvis.! Can't you see? Please! Please! The blood!)
"Can't you see, J?" he slurs, eyes half-closed, trying to lift his hands that are weighed down by his own armor. "The blood, the blood on my hands...cold….I— I'm cold, Jarvis…..I want mama….don't...don't tell father."
The world goes dark.
He wakes to beeping hospital monitors and white sheets.
(He hates white sheets, they stain too easy.)
He looks down, at the gaping, bleeding hole in his chest, at the still-pulsing organ gripped in his hand, hot, fresh blood running in streams across his arms and from his fingers.
(Proof Tony Stark still has a heart.)
He holds it out, an offering, a sacrifice, a gift of the highest order. It's a rare thing, to be given ownership of Tony Stark's heart, only a few have had the opportunity. Jarvis, Ana, Peggy, Mama, and once a time — Howard. After the last crushed it in his fist, it became much more rare of an honor, Rhodey, Pepper, Happy, even the Avengers. (that didn't turn out so well.)
Some take it, with understanding in their eyes and hands joined in his, blood running between the two (but theirs will always, always be cleaner.) Other times they spit in his face, and see the heart in his hand from anyone else but him.
A doctor enters the room, and breaks him from his trance. Rhodey and Pepper follow him. Rhodey looks so terribly angry, and Pepper just looks sad. Pepper hugs him, so light and fluttery, like he's fine china. Rhodey doesn't say anything, just murmurs a, "Tones," and holds his hand.
Tony tries to ignore the blood staining his fingers.
He gets released in a blur. His head's swimming and his hands dripping, and he doesn't even register the arguments he's making, all the money he's throwing at the hospital to let him go.
(There's always a price.)
He's sitting in his workshop staring at his hands, thinking back to those moments, so long ago, the ones where he saw his hands clean, and he thinks — wonders if there ever was blood, or the whole thing is an illusion, twisted from an 8-year-old's nightmare.
In that moment, the blood disappears