ANOTHER story! What is this! This is shameless angst, not even sure where this came from...


Tony was never good enough. Not good enough for his father, not good enough for the public, not good enough for the avengers. No one could imagine how much it stung to reiterate all the reasons he was unsuited for the avengers initiative. Self-centered. Doesn't play well with others. Couldn't anyone see that he was trying? That it was a mask built and strengthened through a lifetime of relative isolation that made him this way?

Apparently not. Because even Capsicle couldn't lay off of him. It was like his father's dissatisfaction with him was passed along. He wasn't good enough for Howard, and he wasn't good enough for the hero who was more a son to the inventor than his real son could ever have been. It wasn't a shock that the super-soldier he'd spent his entire life aspiring to live up to hated him. Not shocking in the least. But it still stung.

And cliched as it may sound, the spoiled rich boy never had any friends either. No one could keep up with his intellect, and graduating several years ahead of his time didn't improve his social standing amongst his peers either. The few people who tolerated him did so because of his money or his genetics. And didn't that just add bitterness to the messed-up cocktail that was Tony Stark.

Did anyone truly like him? Tony didn't think so. His dad's best friend, his father figure after his parents' death, put a hit out on him. The other avengers seemed to tolerate him only for his usefulness, and since he'd proven he would lay down his life for a cause. There was always Pepper and Happy...but he paid them. For gods sakes, one conversation with Loki culminated in being pushed out of a window. Sure, Thor's little brother was a total basket case, but was he really that intolerable that a ten minute conversation made someone want to throw him out of a window?

Sure he seemed proud, self-assured, confident...but that was all a mask carefully constructed from years of insecurities and loneliness. Because underneath his asshole exterior, Tony Stark was just a little boy, crying out for his father's praise. The one thing his billions could never buy him.

Man, he really needed a therapist.


This was totally unedited, sorry for any and all mistakes...probably a piece of crap, but it basically wrote itself anyway.

In case it wasn't obvious, despite my best attempts, I do not yet own the Avengers