A/N: The basic idea of this wanted to be part of "Why Shouldn't They Be Friends," but it kept growing.
Like Fathers, Like Sons
Tony Stark couldn't believe he was out of copper pipe. He didn't need much, but he absolutely couldn't do another thing on his project without it. He scrubbed his dark hair with his fingertips.
"Jarvis, didn't you reorder 12 mm copper pipe when we started to get low?" he asked thin air.
"Of course, sir," the artificial intelligence said reproachfully from a speaker in the wall. "But there was an incident."
"Incident?"
"The supplier needed to redirect our shipment for an emergency situation," Jarvis said.
"Emergency?" Tony asked, then wondered when he started parroting his computer.
"Thieves stole pipe from the heating system at a children's hospital in Pittsburgh."
"With a blizzard coming in?" Tony was outraged.
"Indeed, sir."
That certainly fell within the parameters of "emergency" that Tony had built into his master computer. His own project was nothing critical, unlike heat during a blizzard.
"You could have warned me," Tony complained.
"The request came in last night while you and Ms. Potts were incommunicado."
Tony grinned, remembering the night before.
"I sent you an email," Jarvis said.
But Tony had 217 emails this morning and he'd been focused on his project and he trusted Jarvis to tell him about anything important, so…
Tony clapped his hands decisively. "School's out! Someone pulled the fire alarm. Everyone go home." Maybe Pepper was up for a little more incommunicado, Tony thought salaciously.
Jarvis didn't reply. Sometimes understanding his creator was beyond the AI's logic.
The billionaire genius philanthropist former playboy heard the sound of his true love's voice coming from the Assembly Room. He saw Pepper and Steve sitting side by side, studying a photo album on the coffee table. Clint perched on the back of the couch behind Steve, while Natasha leaned close to Pepper on the other side. Thor and Bruce had pulled up chairs on either side.
All of them were focused on the book on the table. They didn't notice Tony until he spoke.
"Someone call a meeting and forget to text me?" he joked.
If they could have all managed to be as impassive as the two spies, they might have gotten the album out of sight before Tony really noticed it. But Pepper jerked around at Tony's voice, Bruce shrank back and Steve looked as guilty as if he'd been caught making out with Pepper instead of talking about a photo album.
Album.
Son of a bitch! Tony recognized that album. He'd spent some of the best hours of his childhood looking over those photos while his father talked about the people he had known during the war. And, sure enough, there was his father's favorite picture, the one that had awed young Tony — Captain America with his arm draped on Howard Stark's shoulders.
That album represented the peaks and valleys of Tony's relationship with his father, his youthful hero worship — of Dad and Cap — and the crushing feeling of failure and worthlessness when his own accomplishments couldn't earn his father's praise.
The Avengers were the people he trusted most and they'd picked a time when they thought he'd be busy to talk about him and his father.
His friends saw the emotions crash down on him like that wave on Hawaii Five-0. Pepper jumped to her feet, calling his name.
"Pep, how could you? And you …!" his angry gaze focused on Steve who covered his head with his hands as if to ward off a blow.
"Don't blame Steve," Pepper said instantly. She ran around the couch, stumbling over Steve's feet. Clint's quick hand steadied her for an instant, then she ran to Tony before he could run away. "It was my idea. I wanted to find out more about your father. I asked Steve."
Tony waved at the rest of the Avengers. "And so you gathered an audience to talk about me behind my back?"
Natasha thought Pepper needed a little backup, so she snorted loudly, "We weren't invited, Stark. We're eavesdropping."
Clint followed her lead with his usual impeccable timing. "Yeah, spies …" His finger flicked back and forth indicating himself and Natasha. "… scientist…" He pointed at Bruce. "Snooping is part of the job description."
Then all eyes turned to Thor who was baffled by the emotional storm. Of all the Avengers, he was least familiar with Tony's daddy issues. From the events leading up to the Chitauri attack, he knew about Howard Stark's connection to Captain America and to the Tesseract. He didn't know that Tony and his father had been estranged.
"Storytelling is an art on Asgard," Thor explained. "I can never resist a good story well told. I do not understand where we have offended," he ventured. "No one has said an ill word about you or your father."
"My father never cared half as much about me as he did about Captain America. I could never make him happy no matter what I tried. He was a shitty father and I don't need to hear his favorite science project extolling Howard's virtues."
Steve flinched again, but Pepper got right in Tony's face, though her words were gently said. "That's why I brought out the album when I thought you were otherwise occupied."
"Behind my back," Tony accused again.
Pepper's lip twitched, as if sharing a joke. "I prefer to think of it as sparing you from onerous duties, like going to shareholders' meetings, filing paperwork and attending the Board's 'summer soiree.'"
OK, Tony couldn't resist a smile when he heard the stupid name of the annual brunch meeting.
Pepper touched her fingertips to his shoulders and rubbed circles with her thumbs on his collarbones. "I only meant to protect you, Tony. That's all I ever want to do."
And Tony couldn't resist when she looked deep into his eyes. But he was still mad, right? OK, maybe not as much.
"Where'd you find that old thing, anyway?" he asked. "I thought it had gotten lost years ago."
Steve and Bruce looked relieved, because Tony sounded more like himself.
"I found it in the back of a filing cabinet when I was cleaning out old files when I was your secretary," Pepper said. "You told me to burn it, but I couldn't. I thought you might want it some day, so I put it back in the filing cabinet. I knew you'd never find it there," she said ironically.
He made a face at her.
"But now that we're … together, I wanted to know more about the monster in your closet," Pepper said.
"So to find out about old history, you went to the epitome of old history himself," Tony gestured at Steve, who immediately felt better. If Tony was insulting him, things were getting back to normal.
"The question is, Stark. Do you want to join us?" Natasha said coolly, but with a smile. "Or shall we continue to talk about you behind your back."
She slid over on the couch, making more space between herself and Steve. And how could Tony decline the chance to sit between Pepper and Natasha. He took Pepper's hand and, without moving himself, guided her around the couch to her place beside Steve; then he vaulted over the back of the couch to crash crassly between the two women.
Natasha rolled her eyes, but allowed him to assert himself to save face. His moment of bravado evaporated, however, when he regarded the now closed album. He rubbed his hands nervously on his jeans.
"Whenever you're ready, Tony," Steve said, recognizing his friend's hesitation.
"I need a minute," Tony admitted. "Tell me … tell me about your father first."
"My father?" Steve was surprised.
"Yeah, I know about everyone else's crappy childhood. What about yours?"
Bruce and Clint had had abusive fathers. Natasha had few memories of her childhood and couldn't be sure any of them were true, thanks to Red Room brainwashing. And Tony had been sadly neglected by a man Steve had called a friend. But Steve's childhood had ended so long ago — even subjectively — that he didn't think about it much. His childhood had been happy, but cut short by the Great Depression.
"I apologize in advance. I have happy memories of my parents," Steve said — but his eyes were sad. "Just not as many of them as I'd like."
"What did your father do?" Clint asked.
Steve gave a small smile. "My father was a soldier," he said.
Tony rolled his eyes and Steve shrugged. "It's part of why I wanted to enlist so bad," he explained. "My father served the Great War, what we now call World War I, and died of mustard gas poisoning."
"During the war?" Clint said skeptically. "That would make you older than you look."
Everyone laughed (because Steve was a lot older than he looked) and Tony reached around Steve to poke the archer with a derisive finger.
"Oh shut it, Stark," Clint said, pretending to sulk. "You know what I meant."
"I do not," Thor confessed.
"World War I was fought from 1914 to 1918," Steve explained. "I was born in 1922. So my father came home from the war and lived 11 years after being gassed, but he was never the same. He had been tall and strong…"
"Erskine's serum had to latch onto something in your genome to give you that physique," Bruce commented, getting a nod from Tony and a shrug from Steve.
"But after the war my father's scarred lungs made every breath torture," Steve said sadly. "His face and left arm were also scarred by the gas. He was prone to illness and had to be careful in the cold. He lost a great deal of weight and stood stooped as if an old man, though he was barely 30 when he died. My mother had been a nurse during the war. After the war, she nursed her husband. He always said it was thanks to her care he lived so long with scarred lungs. Many did not."
"So sad," Pepper murmured.
"It wasn't all sad," Steve reminded her. "He had a wife who loved him and believed in 'for better, for worse, in sickness and in health,' though my father said he was sorry she got more 'worse' and more 'sickness' than otherwise. My father had been a construction worker before the war, but couldn't do such heavy work after. He found an office job with a stockbroker."
"Oh oh," Tony said.
"Don't get ahead of the story," Steve chided. "The 1920s were a prosperous time. Despite his handicap, my father could support his wife. She no longer worked as a nurse except out of charity for neighbors or friends who needed help. He had an understanding boss who was willing to let the paperwork wait when my father had a bad day. My parents did well."
"And soon they were blessed with a son," Natasha said.
"My father was afraid he wouldn't be able to run and play with his child, but he got the perfect son for him — sickly, wheezing, asthmatic." Steve said it matter-of-factly, with no trace of self-pity. "Instead of running and playing, we read together and drew pictures and played board games. He told me stories of the war, about the pain, but also about the pride he felt defending his country.
"Now my poor mother had two invalids to take care of, but she did it with love and we were happy in our poverty. And then came October 1929."
Thor was the only one who didn't understand. Bruce gave him a quick rundown of World War I, the Roaring 20s, the stock market crash and the Great Depression. Thor nodded understanding of the general flow of events and Steve continued.
"My father lost his job when his kindly stock broker threw himself out of a 15-story window. The only job my father could find was with an old army friend, carrying supplies for construction workers. It was more strenuous work than his body could tolerate. He caught pneumonia in bad weather and died unable to catch his breath, not even able to say goodbye except with his eyes." Steve paused, his eyes lost in the distant past. "I was seven." He paused again and sighed. "Until I met Dr. Erskine, I thought that would be my death, clawing futilely for my last breath."
"What happened to your mother?" Tony asked.
Steve opened his mouth to answer, then shook his head and smiled. "No, we were talking about fathers. We were talking about Howard Stark."
"Well, I tried," Tony muttered, but he smiled and didn't seem quite so tense as before.
"Tell me about your father, Tony. What did Howard do to make you hate him?" Steve asked.
Tony dropped his eyes.
"That's the problem, isn't it?" the ever-observant Natasha Romanoff said kindly.
"You mean, you didn't hate your father?" Bruce asked. Bruce's abusive father had been a monster. Hate was an insipid word for what the scientist felt.
"No," Tony said hoarsely. "That's what hurt so much. I loved him. I wanted him to be proud of me and he never was. He never hit me, didn't even yell at me much, but he ignored me a lot and was coldly disappointed with everything I did to impress him. And I tried so hard to impress him."
"Was he always like that?" Pepper asked.
"No, when I was little he spent a lot of time with me," Tony remembered. "I mean, he was gone a lot, building the business, helping found SHIELD, looking for Cap, but when he was home, he played with me. We built things together. We built a motorcycle together when I was six," Tony said proudly.
Tony touched the picture of Steve and Howard during the war. "He told me stories about Captain America and his friends during the war. I was so proud. My father knew Captain America!"
Steve ducked his head in embarrassment.
"Dad let me take this photo to school for show and tell. That's how this corner got torn. One of the bigger kids grabbed it, but the teacher rescued it for me. Dad wasn't even mad. We were pals."
"I suppose you were one of the smaller kids in school," Bruce commented. "Skipping so many grades, I mean."
Tony nodded and Steve laughed.
"It's hard to believe we thought we didn't have anything in common when we first met. I was always the smallest kid in class but I could never keep my mouth shut when I saw bullies picking on younger kids, so I got beat up a lot."
Tony hadn't said anything about having a big mouth, but knowing Tony, that was a given. He smirked at his blond friend.
"I only got beat up once," Tony said. "Then I paid a couple of the biggest boys to be my bodyguards."
His audience laughed and Tony shrugged. "I was the smallest kid in class because I was the smartest. I just used those smarts." His face fell. "My Dad didn't appreciate those smarts. I built Dummy when I was a kid, but Dad just pointed out all the flaws. I graduated from MIT when I was 17…"
"That's the age most students start," Bruce told Thor.
"… but Dad didn't even come to the ceremony," Tony finished.
"When did he change?" Clint said.
Tony had been thumbing through the photo album. It started with his father's adventures during the war, then moved on. Everyone could see the pride in Howard's eyes at his wedding and when he held his newborn son. There were many photos of the happy family — Howard, Maria and little Tony. Lots of pictures showed Howard and Tony working on some project. Pepper's favorite showed kindergarten-aged Tony sitting on his father's shoulders to finish off the top of an Erector Set skyscraper.
Tony obviously knew the album well. He came to a picture of his mother in an Easter dress, but hesitated to turn the page.
"Something wrong?" Clint asked.
"Don't want to give Steve a swelled head," Tony said. "This was the best day of my childhood."
He turned the page and everyone laughed to see young Tony dressed as Captain America. He and his father were posing together, obviously imitating the picture of Howard and Cap.
"This was my eighth birthday. The best day of my life," Tony said. "We had a great time. My Dad was so excited. He said he had a new idea for a way to find Cap and he wouldn't be leaving town for a while, so we could spend more time together. He promised me a trip to the natural history museum. He never made good on the promise. That was the day, Clint. That was the day things changed. After that, Dad was home more, but he seemed distracted. He'd snap that he didn't have time for my childish games. He was different." There was a bewildered, childish note in Tony's voice as he remembered his youthful disappointment.
"What was Howard like when you knew him, Steve?" Pepper asked.
"I was busy fighting a war. Never thought about what kind of father Howard Stark would make. But if I had…" Steve hesitated, swallowed, and then bravely continued. "… I would have thought he'd make a good one. He was kind to the big oaf from Brooklyn who didn't know anything about the world, society, women …" He quirked a smile. "Or even what fondue was. He explained things without making fun of me or calling me names." Steve gave Tony a sly glance that made the others laughed. Tony responded with a half-hearted "who me?" look.
"Howard was always flying off to get supplies for his experiments and he never failed to bring back something for the men — fresh fruits and vegetables …" Steve closed his eyes at a memory that still made his mouth water. "…fresh bread still warm. I don't know how he managed that." Steve sighed. "I can't understand what happened to make that kind and thoughtful man turn into such a neglectful, self-centered father."
"But is it not obvious?" Thor's deep voice made everyone jump, even though he spoke quietly. He'd been sitting leaning forward in his chair, hands folded between his knees, as attentive as a diligent schoolboy. He hadn't said a word, so they'd almost forgotten he was there. But he'd been paying attention.
Receiving blank looks in answer to his question, Thor continued, "Perhaps it is only that I am from Asgard and I more readily see the possibility of magic."
Clint still didn't understand, but felt a sickness in the pit of his stomach at the mention of magic. Natasha sensed his uneasiness and put her hand over his.
"Still not following you, big guy," Tony said with wary hope. Could Thor answer a question that had darkened all of Tony's childhood.
"What happened between the time Steve Rogers crashed in the ice and the time of Tony Stark's eighth birthday?" Thor asked. "What touched Howard Stark in that time? Or, rather, what did he touch?"
Putting that time frame together with the mention of magic made Tony's eyes narrow and Steve's widen.
"The Tesseract!" Bruce exclaimed.
Thor nodded. "It is a force for discord, as we saw with the scepter, which carries only a fraction of the Tesseract's full power. It could easily poison a man's thoughts."
"And they didn't know shit about shielding in those days," Tony muttered.
Steve sat forward in excitement. "Tony! When did Howard start using the Tesseract to try to find me?"
"I don't know, but SHIELD will. Jarvis …"
"Down, Stark." Clint had his cellphone out and was pressing a contact button. "Let's try the easy way first. Hey, Jasper," he said into the phone. "Can you tell me when Howard Stark started working with the Tesseract to find Cap — if he did, that is?"
Agent Sitwell began to type a search into his computer, as he asked, "Why?"
"It came up in conversation and I bet Tony I could find out faster than he could hack SHIELD's database. It's not classified, is it?"
"The results of his tests, maybe, but the dates, no." Sitwell rattled off a few relevant dates. Clint thanked him.
"Stark can thank me by not hacking SHIELD today while I'm duty officer."
"I'll sit on him myself," Clint promised. As he put his phone away, he told them when Howard found the cube — a year or so after the end of the war when he was no longer bound by obligations to the military and could fund a search with his own money.
"He turned it over to the Strategic Scientific Reserve, one of the parent organizations of SHIELD, and it stayed in a heavily shielded vault for years until Stark asked to do some tests with it. He thought that the cube might have left a residue of energy in Schmidt's super plane and he could use the Tesseract to find the plane."
"And thereby find Cap," Bruce said.
"When did he start that project?" Tony asked tensely. Everyone leaned forward anticipating the answer.
Clint gave them a date. They could all compare it with the date on the happy birthday photo in the album on Steve's lap. Howard started working with the Tesseract two days after Tony's eighth birthday.
"He worked with it off and on until a week before his death," Clint said.
"It can't be a coincidence, can it?" Tony almost pleaded.
"As scientists, we don't believe in coincidences," Bruce said.
Tony felt light-headed, freed of a burden he'd carried for more than 30 years. It was like finding out his father had been poisoned or had a brain tumor. It still hurt to remember the harsh words between them, but the estrangement wasn't Tony's fault. It wasn't Howard's fault. It sure wasn't Cap's fault.
Steve exuberantly pulled Tony into a hug, squashing a laughing Pepper in between them.
"He wasn't a bad person; he was just sick," Tony said.
"He was sick, and you can't inherit that sickness from him," Pepper added, knowing Tony's deepest fears.
Now, after all those years, Tony could look at his father's face in the album and remember the happy times, instead of the disappointment.
He flipped back and forth between the photo of Howard and Cap, and the one where he and his dad imitated the pose. "You know, I think I'll get copies of these pictures and put them up on the shelf together. And, Pep, think you can find a better place for the album than an old filing cabinet?"
"Yes, Mr. Stark," Pepper answered doing her demure, secretary impersonation. "I'll get right on that." She gave him a lingering kiss, then picked up the album and started for the bedroom.
Tony started after her. He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively at the Avengers. "Don't wait up, guys. We'll be incommunicado." He chased Pepper out of the room.
"Wait up?" Clint complained. "It's only 11 a.m.!"
A/N: I liked young Howard Stark in "Captain America: The First Avenger," so I decided to rehabilitate Tony's father.
