I do not own The Avengers, I am merely writing this fix-it fic because Infinity War was bullshit and could've done so much more.

It was around her 31st birthday when Antonia Stark decided to do some slumming and went into a "college tavern". There were, obviously, naive college kids, but let's be honest, she might sleep around, but she'd never do it with anyone she could tell was at most three years younger than her. That being said, she was ready to call it a failure when someone she'd just rather call "Sweetcheeks" walked in, and, whew boy, she had to tap that. Knocking back the last of her drink, she made her way towards him, immediately attaching herself to his arm and giving her best bedroom grin.

"Seem what did I tell you?" The man who walked in with him - too old for her, ugh - laughed, sending a wink towards her. The man she was holding onto said nothing, but his look gave it all. He has not interested.

"I apologize," he said, and she felt something in her shift. "I'm not interested. I have testing in the morning."

"I just want to talk," she informed him, because he seemed like a semi-intelligent man. And maybe even get you in bed, if your IQ is high enough. The man thought about it before nodding and they made their way to a booth, to the booth where it all began.

Eight hours and a pounding hangover later, Toni woke up before her bedfellow, allowing her a small, intimate moment in which she carefully observed his sleeping face before she all too easily slipped out of the hotel bed and out of the room.

She didn't know that he had woken up before her, nor did she know that, like her, there had been that small fleeting moment of intimacy. He forced himself not to react as she left, though his muscles clenched as he opened his eyes and scowled. Bartholomew had been right about one aspect; rich women would flock to him.

All they did, it seemed, was waste his time.

She felt like crying alongside the infant's wailing as they tried passing him off to her - don't they know she didn't like things being handed to her? Obi, god bless him, took the newborn and carefully bounced him, having just became a father himself. "His name, ma'am?" The doctor asked, and she sent a dark scowl towards him.

"Adoption," she immediately answered. "Closed, I'm all too willing to admit I'm too much of a fuck up to me a mother," she saw a nurse nod in agreement, and the scrubbed woman was quick to get one of her famous birds. "Just…. Don't contact me about him again."

Obadiah took over the adoption process, and all she knew is that he was given to a good Science! Family who struggled to have a kid of their own. Then, of course, it all went to shit, and Stane turned out to be a bad guy, and for those few moments of their fight, her mind flashed only to that day, to the infant's wail, no doubt deeper by now…

Then it was over. Stane was gone, the only one aside from Rhodey who knew about the boy, and she was being contacted for her work as Iron Man. Years later, when Cap and the One-Armed-Wonder almost beat her to death, she sat back, retreating all those years ago… and a few days back.

She hadn't meant to dig; it was like a second nature to her. The kid just seemed… too jumpy, too defensive about his parents. So she automatically dug, and found a closed adoption. Those, of course, happened every day, and she felt that mighty need to do something illegal, so she had… broken the seal. She broke the seal…

And Obadiah Stane's face and signature was one of the first things she had seen.

She found herself back at the compound, and suddenly the kid was fighting some weird-ass upstart and… all she could see was herself and Stane. She didn't want that to happen to him. She didn't want him to become her. She wanted him to be better than her. So, stupidly, she took the suit and cut contact. He'd be better without me was what she told herself as she continued to do regular maintenance checks on Vision, DUM-E, U and Butterfingers, it's better this way.

It wasn't better that way.

He was almost crushed, his spine was almost fractured. Vulture had gone after one of her planes, the one carrying all the Avenger stuff, and the kid stopped him at the price of torn clothes, singed fingers and her having to panically inform Pepper, Rhodey and Happy that her estranged bio kid had wormed his way back into her life.

There was a lull, almost a full year, where nothing happened, and he came to her and asked a question she almost broke down to. "Can you help me find my birth parents?" She wanted to break down, to tell him he found his mother, but she didn't exactly know who her father was. Instead, she just did as asked, all the way up to the closed adoption part. By then, he had fallen asleep, and all she had to do was one keystroke…

Glancing between him and the haunting photo of someone she once considered family, she closed her eyes and hit the key. When she opened them, only two words showed: No information. "Sorry kid," she told him when he woke up thirty minutes later, shortly after her breakdown had finished. "Looks like they didn't want to be found."

It's not like I don't like you, she thought as he wilted and walked out of the lab.

I didn't do it because I don't want you in my life, she realized as she had him chase after the Wizard, a pit of dread building in her.

I did it because I want to keep you safe, she wanted to snap as they argued on the ship; he should've stayed on Earth!

Later, as she hugged her son for the first time in her life, tears streaming down both their faces, a sharp sense of realization filled her.

I did it because I love you.

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