Tony swapped the usual palm pilot in his hand for a bouquet of two dozen pure white roses. Every year he had a dozen white roses to his mother's grave as well as red roses to Pepper delivered on Valentines day by the usual flower business that had catered for him for over three decades, having once been the mom and pop choice of his father. The owners of the business ran a relatively genuine flower shop for the wealthy, of which secrecy was very crucial. Flowers were used to convey many things, send many messages, and if anyone who didn't have pure intentions were to figure out what a dozen roses sent to some office in downtown meant…it could be disastrous.
This year, however, was different. Why he had decided to take the roses to his mother himself, he didn't know. What he did know was that he just had to be the one to take them to her. As he reached the area where his parent's plots were, side by side just like they had died, he closed his eyes and sighed deeply, the fatigue clear on his features as he leaned down to lay the roses upon the grass. He hadn't been there in over two years, yet he doubted that even if he had been there daily…it wouldn't be able to stop the small pang in his chest.
He bit his lip as he let his mind adjust, sighing once more before leaning down to sit, crossing his legs underneath him, shivering slightly at the cool, wet grass soaking through his slacks. Closing his eyes, he let his mind drift back to the summer before he left for collage. His mom had been adamant on teaching him to cook, but she never got any progress from him. It never phased her. Not once, did she give up nor yell at him for ruining yet another one of her pots, no. She just persisted and persisted before Tony just became much too embarrassed to continue. While he had a rule about quitting something once he had started it, he had to break it after the seventh time he burned the pasta.
"I never once did learn how to cook, ma." He blurted out, his eyes still closed. "I know I said that I would eventually learn how to cook more than Ramen, but I didn't. There's this girl, er- woman, that I know. She's trying to get me to learn how to cook and I'm sorely tempted to accept, no matter how much I fuck it up. Just so I could say I kept my promise to you" He swallowed the lump in his throat and whispered under his breath, "I meant to come visit you once I found out that I way dying, you know? You have to know, you always knew everything." Tony smiled fondly, exhaling slowly before tilting his head up to the sky, letting the drizzle spray at his face for a few moments.
"I think you'd be proud of me, proud of what I've become. I'm much more than my fath-" For some reason he couldn't bring himself to call Howard his father. "than Howard was. I stopped manufacturing weapons, remember? Now I'm just on the good side of it all." He cleared his throat and ran his fingertips over the engraved letters on his mother's grave stone. As his fingers traced the name 'Maria', he began to speak again. "Some times I wish that he had been the only one who left me, mom. But you loved him. You loved him so much and I could see it, even if I couldn't stand it. He made you happy and I wasn't ever going to stop him from doing good, because he was the only one that could make you smile like that, wasn't he? No, I couldn't have wanted you to live through his death." He swallowed the lump in his throat and stayed silent for what seemed like hours yet was merely only minutes.
"I don't suppose that you'd do me a favor and kick his ass for me? For making me hate him so fucking much, only to leave me that video and confuse me. You probably would too, I remember how mad you'd get whenever he had a moment. But how could you? You two probably aren't even in the same place." He wondered briefly, how could someone believe in Heaven and Hell, but not in god?. Letting himself think over that, he stayed quiet for the next seventy eight minutes, before he heard Happy call out to him, just to make sure that Tony hadn't been hurt during the two hours he spent out here. Forcing himself to rise, he kissed the tip of his fingers before pressing them against the gravestone.
"I miss you so much, mom. So much." He muttered softly, "I'd do anything just to hold you again." Tony closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before releasing it slowly. "Happy Valentines day, ma." He finally managed to pull himself away from her plot, not even glancing back at his fathers when he passed it on his way to Happy.