My father, Howard Stark, was a difficult man - stubborn, uncooperative, and often distant from my mother and I. Throughout my childhood, he provided care from a distance, always looking ahead to a larger goal: the search for Captain America. As a young boy, I believed that it was my own fault, that my father might love me and pay me some attention if only I could be as fast, as strong, as smart as the super soldier he so longed to find.
The only time I remember him voicing his approval of me was the first year of high school, after the school science fair. I had poured my frustration, my goals, my aspirations into the project, created an artificial intelligence system so far advanced that I was accused of stealing the ideas and was disqualified. My father, who had come to surprise me, caught me crying behind the school, my project next to me. He sat down at my side, saying "The problem with genius is, most people don't recognize it for what it's worth. You'll be shot down more times than you can count, and it'll get to be a real struggle to continue creating with the whole world against you. Just remember to trust yourself and your brain, and that whatever happens, I am proud to call you my son."
My parents were killed in a car crash five years later, leaving me twenty years old, an heir to a vast fortune, and utterly alone in the world. I am ashamed to admit that I turned to the world of alcohol, women, and missiles, becoming what I had despised throughout my childhood, a selfish man interested only in his own gains. It would be many years, an arc reactor, and an iron suit before I finally understood what my father had tried to tell me all those years ago.
As most people are by now aware, I was attacked by the terrorist organization Ten Rings during a visit to Afghanistan several years ago, leaving me with shrapnel and an electromagnet in my chest. It was about this time I realized that there was more to life than the next social event, the next money maker. I also discovered the keys to my father's locked safe, which had been kept in storage since his death over ten years before. The safe held papers, files, and a journal. It was the intimate details of his personal search and struggle to rediscover Steve Rogers and the tesseract. What I expected from the files and what I found were completely different.
I had spent my childhood hating Captain America, the man who was more like a son to my father than I ever seemed to be. He was perfect, a specimen of everything I wanted in my own life, and my father obsessed over that perfection, his journal detailing every moment spent with or discussing the super soldier. I read with apprehension, hating the man I could never be, hating my father for expecting me to be him.
And yet, as I dove into the life of Steve Rogers, I began to understand the man behind the shield. Even though my own father's obsession with him could never be explained, reading about Captain America through his eyes showed me not a soldier, not a perfect man, but a human being, one whom I could understand, who had his own struggles and obstacles. For the first time in my life, I understood what my father had worked for his entire life, and why it was so important to him.
The safe also contained all the information gathered by my father and other scientists of the 1940s in regard to the tesseract. It was first found and used by Johann Schmidt, the man who became known as Red Skull after injecting himself with a faulty super soldier serum in an attempt to emulate Project: Rebirth, which had created Captain America. It was known to have immense power, and supplied Hydra, the separatist Nazi organization led by Schmidt, unlimited energy. There were also rumors that it could open portals to other parts of the universe, although these were never confirmed. Beyond that and a physical description of the cube, there was little else known about it, as it had vanished around the same time as Captain America, presumably somewhere in the northern Atlantic Ocean.
I call this period the rebirth of Tony Stark. In a few days, my whole understanding of my father and his life work had changed, and finally, after so many years, I found focus and direction in my own life. Captain America was still out there somewhere, as was the tesseract, and they, although elusive, beckoned me to find them, to succeed where my father had failed. It was not merely the principle of finding the missing soldier, it was the call of an unlimited energy source that drew me to the project.
Imagine, the tesseract could potentially supply all of the United States with clean, renewable energy. Finding it could change the world, recreating the world energy spectrum, and I was fully prepared to be the catalyst for change. All I had to figure out was how to harness it.
Now, two years later, the search goes on. Captain America and the tesseract remain undiscovered, and after years of failure, it becomes difficult to stay optimistic. However, having found a direction, I refuse to be let down. I believe that finding a dream is rare in the world today, and having found my own, there is no force on this earth, human or supernatural, that could dissuade me from the goal. Ultimately, I will find Steve Rogers and the tesseract, however many millions of dollars it may cost. My father had a dream, and as a boy, I never understood his fascination with what I believed could never be rediscovered. Too late, I learned why he searched for so long, and now, so many years later, his vision has become my own.
Or, perhaps he knew all along that he would fail. Perhaps he set me up, as a young boy, to succeed where he knew he could not. Regardless of his true intentions, he still manages to teach me new things, the more I try to understand his work. It took thirty years to realize it, but I see now the man behind the image.
Thank you, Dad. I hope I make you proud.