There's always a part of Steve that would like to believe his friends were actually the best of him but it keeps getting harder and harder.
Not that there's anything wrong with Peggy – the woman is a saint, putting up with him even now that she's old and fading, and he's still just as he was when the plane crashed. But she's never bitter about it, she's always caring and kind, and Steve loves her more than life itself.
There was someone else, though, who was kind of the center of his world back then. Someone apart from Bucky and Peggy and his Howling Commandos that he always thought he could trust to do the right thing, even if he liked playing at being a jerk, and that someone was Howard. He wasn't always easy to get along with, and yet Steve loved him like he did Bucky, but every day he sees the marks Howard left on Tony, he hates the man's memory more and more.
Not physical marks, never that, not even Howard would stoop so low as to hurt a child, but the little things Tony says or does, ordoesn't say or do, that Steve starts picking up and he's curious about it, he's really curious about it. He can't really go and ask Tony, though, he knows the man would never, ever open up to him, but Peggy knows something. He's sure she does, and Steve decides to get it out of her somehow, because he just wants to know what did Howard do to make Tony hate himself so much, how did Howard manage to screw up a child to such an extent that the side effect makes Tony think he's expendable – at every mission, in every battle, Tony throws himself at it with no concern for his own wellbeing. He flies nuclear bombs into wormholes, and throws himself in front of death rays, and battles with the Hulk the one time Bruce was poisoned, and it worries Steve.
It worries him so much, he goes back and asks Peggy.
By the end of it, he kind of wishes he hadn't.
X
Howard had the wrong kind of background to be working for the government.
His parents didn't have deep pockets, and he wasn't from a traditional family – the only thing that got him where he was had been his own effort, his own genius brain, and a lot of hard work.
World War II was a terrible time for everyone, but Howard isn't going to lie and say that it wasn't one of the reasons he had so much money now – he worked for the government, he got more contracts than he could possibly deal with alone, and he fucking flourished in the business world. Apart from that slight trouble he had with the SSR thinking he had stolen his own tech to sell in the black market, life was good no matter what.
Well, except there were some doors money couldn't really open. He could be a genius and a war hero, and he could have helped establishing S.H.I.E.L.D., but some clubs still refused him entrance, and in some social settings, he was still seen as the "new rich", the second-generation immigrant who couldn't quite breach their ranks just by having money.
Howard detested being denied anything, even if he didn't really want it. He liked his life, the way he could have ten girls in a week, being a bachelor and living day to day, tinkering with his inventions and making bucket loads of money while he was at it. However, being told he couldn't have something was usually the stepping stone for him to devise a way that he could, and so the answer became quite clear: he should get married. Marrying into an old blood, old money kind of family would get him anywhere he wanted.
Maria Collins Carbonell was a pretty girl in her mid-twenties, who was having some trouble finding a place in the world – her family was old and traditional, but the war had pretty much wiped out their money, and so she couldn't actually find a job working as a secretary, and also couldn't hope to find a suitable husband in her own class – Howard and she met at a fundraiser ball, him with a gaggle of girls trailing after him and a glass of scotch permanently being refilled in his hand; she in a secondhand gown her mother had managed to procure so she could come and maybe find a rich widow to marry.
It was a good arrangement, really. Stark was crude and rough, very much unlike the men she was used to deal with, but he had money and needed the social status, which she had. It would be a good life, definitely, and it certainly wouldn't be the first marriage to be made without feelings being involved.
Problem was, Maria clearly underestimated what being in close contact with Howard Stark would be like.
The man was a player, first and foremost, and his fame with the ladies wasn't just for show – he went through women like a woman goes through blouses, because he made them all feel special. Those moments when Howard Stark was looking at a woman in the eyes, he made them feel as if they were the only thing that mattered in the universe, and Stark didn't just turn his charm off when he was at home – he may not love Maria, she wasn't even sure he knew how to love someone that way, but he was there, and she was pretty, and they were married, so why not?
As if it was meant to be, Maria fell in love with her husband, which wouldn't be a problem at all if it weren't for the fact that her husband was Howard Stark.
Howard Stark didn't do love.
She tried confessing her feelings for him a few times, but was never sure whether he understood her or if he just thought she was being charming and a good wife, and Maria was, by that point, at a loss.
Until she had a great idea, that, in her eyes, could make her marriage real in a way that right now it just wasn't: Maria got pregnant.
What man didn't want to carry on his legacy in an offspring? Hopefully, she could be pregnant with a boy, and then what wouldn't Howard do for her, really?
Turns out, he would do pretty much nothing for her, because Howard had never wanted – or planned – to have kids.
It should have been something they talked about in their first year of marriage, or, even better, before they got married, but it really didn't occur to Maria that a man, a family man, with money to spare and a young and willing wife, wouldn't want a child. Howard was a bit eccentric at times, a bit strange, but she had never thought he would be so odd as to not want to have a son or a daughter to carry on his family name.
Her seven months of pregnancy were some of the worst she had ever lived. By then, her mother was long gone, and Maria was the last Carbonell left, which meant she didn't even have her own family around to comfort her.
She had few friends – mostly because every woman who encountered Howard was prey in his eyes, and she didn't think it appropriate to have male friends.
Maria was alone, with an angry husband, a child neither of them actually wanted, and an uncertain future ahead of them.
One night, when she was seven months along, Howard suggested that maybe they should split up – he would pay her bills in Europe or somewhere else, and he could stay and live his life in America as he had always done.
Maria had a panic attack, and had to be taken to the hospital, where she had a C-section, and thus Anthony Edward Stark was born.
Howard looked at Anthony and snorted a bit, as if the child was a passing amusement. He didn't mention Europe or divorce anymore, but he never touched Maria again either.
If she had felt lonely and isolated before, then it was nothing compared to what she was feeling now – having Anthony around only ever reminded her of her failures as a wife and a woman. Her whole marriage was such a convoluted lie she couldn't even believe she had been involved in it, and things started spiraling out of control when Tony was just a few months old.
Howard, to no one's surprise, was not exactly the fatherly type. What was a surprise to Maria was that she wasn't exactly motherly either. She gained no pleasure knowing that little life depended on her, she held no desire to feed him or sing him to sleep. As soon as it was acceptable, she hired a nanny, and stayed as far away from Anthony as she could.
Peggy had been around a few times back then, although working on S.H.I.E.L.D. took up so much time she had barely the time to make sure her own home wasn't being driven to the ground, and she certainly didn't have the time – or the temperament – to be around the Starks for long.
She and Jarvis had a working relationship, he was usually the go-between for her and Howard, and she noticed when the man started looking more and more worried about something. She pressed a bit and he gave her a small view into what was going on with Howard's life, and Peggy didn't really know what to think.
Peggy didn't really come around as often as she would have liked, or even as much as she would have wanted, but Anthony seemed to her such a bright, good child that she never thought there was something wrong with the way he was being raised.
She tried befriending Maria, making it clear that nothing would ever, ever happen between her and Howard, since they had known each other since the war, and the only thing that kept their so-called friendship together was their love for Steve.
Oh, Steve.
The first time he was brought into a conversation, Anthony was two and being taken care of by the new nanny, while the adults enjoyed some drinks in the living room. Her husband wasn't there, which was just as well, because Howard seemed to take great pleasure in telling Maria about their fondue story and many others that happened during the war. It was all quite common, if it wasn't for Howard's parting comment, when she was already leaving.
"I think he was the only person I actually really loved in my life."
Peggy put it down as drunken sentimentalism, but Maria heard that as the cruelest of jabs – he loved a dead man from twenty years before, but he didn't love her, or her child, or anyone else, for that matter, but himself.
And Steve.
Howard never took the time to explain to his wife that he loved Steve for being all that Howard would never, ever be. A good man, a good soldier, committed to a cause and willing to literally die for it – Howard never had that, he never believed in something so much he would give his life to see it happen – he loved his own skin a bit too much to be that kind of person. He never told her that, and even if he had, Maria would probably never understand it either – she too was selfish and self-centered, the spoiled little girl that never really got to get the toy she wanted, the way she wanted.
They just weren't very good people, and having a child didn't change that in them.
Jarvis would watch little Anthony as he went through nannies at an alarming rate: some of them scared away by Maria, some by Howard, some by Anthony himself – and what a nightmare child Anthony was.
The child had trouble sleeping and tended to stay awake for nights on end, having small naps here and there, never long enough for the adults responsible for him to really rest. He was always uneasy, always moving and talking at a speed that wasn't fast enough to catch up to his thoughts. He was always disassembling things even way before he thought he could put them back together, and he had no limits.
Maria found no joy in his antics, but she also didn't care enough to try and put an end to them. And Howard…
Howard only started paying attention to Anthony when he was four, got into his workroom and build a circuit board – a working one.
For a whole second, Howard stared at his son, working away as if he actually knewwhat he was doing, and a swell of pride filled his chest – he did that.
And then Antony had showed him the circuit, and Howard's thoughts caught up to him thinking, no. He did that. At four years old.
The sole reason Howard had been successful his whole life was his intelligence – he wasn't just smart, he was a genius, he stood apart from the rest of human kind, because he was better – but even he wouldn't have been able to build a circuit board at four, or an engine at six.
He tried, he fucking tried so hard to be proud of his son and his accomplishments, but at the same time all he could think was he's better than you.
He's better than you, and he has it easier than you.
Anthony wouldn't have to fight his way into the world – the world would be open to him because he was handsome (how wouldn't he be with him and Maria as his parents?), he was rich and well bred, and now, apparently, a genius. There would be nothing his kid wouldn't be able to get, nothing he couldn't do, and even Howard's legacy in the world would be forgotten when Tony reached his full potential.
He would become obsolete when his son became a man in his own right, and Howard had a really hard time coming to terms with that particular thought.
When Tony was seven, he shipped him off to boarding school. He didn't even drive the kid there – Jarvis took him, and made sure he was all settled in before coming back.
By then, Howard had managed to drive away Peggy, and his drinking had never been worse. When Maria realized her child didn't live in the house anymore, she started taking anti-depressants like they were going out of style, because now she didn't even have to pretend to be a mother anymore.
They were falling apart, and Jarvis was doing his best to keep the pieces close together so outsiders wouldn't see them breaking, but it was so hard.
Peggy only ever heard about Tony from Jarvis, who loved the kid as if he was his own – certainly way more than Howard or Maria ever did.
When Tony was fifteen, he got into MIT, and Howard had hired a young man called Obadiah Stane to work with him. He told Tony it was just because Tony had to complete his degrees before coming to work with him, but both of them knew, by then, that Howard would never really want to work with Tony. He had a grudging respect for his son, and his greatest project had been left for him – a gift Howard would give no one else, even if there was anyone else who could finish it – but he couldn't quite deal with staring at a better person than him in the face every day.
When Tony was seventeen both his parents died in a supposed car accident, and he was left alone, with Obadiah as his guardian and CEO of his company. Jarvis stood beside him at the funeral, and took him back to school, and did all he could, but some wounds are too deep to heal.
Peggy heard all of this from Jarvis over the years – sometimes she wishes she could have been there for Tony, but she also knows she wouldn't have made that much of a difference.
Who was she after all, in Tony's life, to make it better when his own parents had managed to make it so bad?
She lost contact with the Starks when Tony was twenty, and Jarvis died of a heart attack.
She cries when she tells Steve he story, regret and sorrow etched on her face, and a slight smile at the end, telling him she misses Jarvis something fierce, way more than she ever did Howard. He was her friend, and a better man than most.
Steve is not really sure what he's supposed to do now – after all, he had wanted to know, and now he did.
But then what?
He couldn't take back what Howard had done, and he couldn't make Tony believe that there were people in his life who loved him despite not being on his payroll.
They did though.
He would just have to find a way to show him that.