So yeah, this is an interlude! Enjoy!
Truth was, at first Howard didn't notice anything different on his son, Tony. His voice, his behavior, even simple things like his preference in food was still the same.
Sometimes Howard liked to think that everything that happened that night had been nothing but a bad dream, were it not for those blue eyes… Those unnerving blue eyes that always seemed to follow him in his sleep.
When Maria had seen her son after that fateful night she had cried. Big wet tears rolling down her perfect cheeks as she hugged the small body closer to her, sobs wrecking her body while Tony asked what was wrong with her.
It hurt Howard to see his wife come undone like that; it hurt how she wouldn't look at him after he had told her some made up story about Anthony accidentally touching some genetically modifying substance while he had been in his lab. Because the truth is, Howard was sure that the truth would destroy her.
After a while, life continued as normal. If Howard spent more and more time away from home, no one would mention it. Conversations with his wife and nights together shared in one bed had become less and then ceased to exist, they simply ignored it. When people gave Tony strange looks and started asking questions they simply locked him away on social functions.
And for a short period of time it worked. But slowly their little bubble began to crumble and the changes in Tony became prominent to those that cared to look.
It started with a simple fight between Tony and another child at the private school. The teacher's hands were shaking as she told them that the other child had to be hospitalized. She asked why they didn't mention that Tony had such strength to be able to seriously injure a child five years older than him.
When they asked Tony why he had done it his response had been "fun" and the innocent smile on his lips turned cruel.
Maria wouldn't leave her room for two days and when sobs and cries of "This isn't my child!" and "Give me my Anthony back" penetrated the door, then no one mentioned it either.
Tony was a child that ripped out the wings of butterflies to slowly watch them die and all the hope in Howard, that Tony was still his little son, started to die like those winged creatures.
To outsiders the situation seemed to improve as Tony grew older, which also could've attributed to the fact that he started MIT at fifteen and therefore left the Stark home behind. And while he wasn't as openly hostile and brutal, he turned much more sinister, narcissistic and self-destructive.
The amount of money Howard had to donate to the MIT so that his son's scandals wouldn't become public made his head hurt and his gut clench.
Even though the regret of what he had done, the deal he had made, still accompanied him wherever he went and kept him awake at night, it was slowly overshadowed by hate. This boy, man, wasn't his son. It was someone else in Tony's body so how could he continue to love him? This empty body, this shell with blue eyes that saw everything, served only as a constant warning and added to the painful memories that he had made with his one mistake. He hated it, hated what his son had become, wanted to get rid of it and forget it. And yet, he was scared of his own thoughts, of what he would do…
So it came with great relief when in 1991 Howard Stark saw the truck coming closer, unable to stop, and he knew he was going to die.
Next chapter will finally start with Tony's POV and continue like that for all chapters (Maybe one day I'll write Loki's POV of this story)