Sixteen years ago, I lost my son, with nothing but a blurry photo and a blissful memory to remember him with. Sixteen years ago, a one year old boy, my baby boy, was stolen from right inside my home.
Pepper and I searched for months, never giving up hope on where our child may be. Even when the police gave up on our case, I used every resource I had to search for my baby.
And I failed.
What's the point of being the richest, most powerful man in the world if I can't even protect my own family?
"PLEASE!" Pepper pleaded, desperation lacing her screams. "Don't take him, please!"
Pepper and I went to bed in our room, leaving our child in the nursery room. We had just settled in when the baby monitor camera in his room started blinking, alerting us of another presence in the room.
"What do you want?" I yelled at the man. "I'll do anything, give us our boy back! Please!"
Months after searching, a photo came in our mail. A bloodied and dismembered body of a young child. My child. I recognize his eyes, though lifeless in the photo. His hair, the soft brown curls that twisted from his head, was matted with blood and stuck to his forehead. My baby boy.
He was dead, officially. The photo came without even a note. We didn't even have a body to bury, but the small casket still felt the heaviest. It still went six feet under, but the grave was so small. No parent should ever have to bury their child.
After the funeral, Pepper and I had a falling out and we eventually settled on a divorce. Throughout every argument and drunken moment, we had filled the crevice with the slim hope of finding our child. After that hope was pinched out, the rift between us was too deep to repair. We signed the papers and moved on. Pepper now only calls me to talk about business related things as she took over as the CEO of Stark Industries.
What am I afraid of? People rise out of the ashes because, at some point, they are invested with a belief in the possibility of triumph over seemingly impossible odds. The ashes have surrounded me and I am left drowning in their after effects. There's no room to breathe. No room to look up and see the sky. There is only the gray ashes covering my vision. Am I afraid of love? Am I afraid that I had lost my heart because I gave it all to a young boy who I can no longer hug or kiss or keep close to me?
Fear is a fickle thing.
Every hour I spend in that lab, I embrace that fear. It motivates me to work and keep on going. It bites me in the ass and forces me to not give me a second to grieve because that fear tells me that once I let myself grieve, I'll never recover. There's no turning back.
No.
A few glasses of whiskey can just wash out those emotions.
I have failed as a father. What kind of man cannot even protect their own family? My son disappeared and was killed, taking my marriage and any other chance of family away from me as well. Pepper and I... as much as I hate to admit, we were too broken after Peter's disappearance that we couldn't stay together. It was too hard.
I tried so hard to forget. I kept on tipping back glasses, thinking that, one day, it'll all get better. It never did. The hollow feeling and pain in my chest that grew like a gnawing pain only seemed to get worse and worse. The empty feeling of simple dissatisfaction with life. I look around me and think of all the places where my child could be and the only place I can think of is safe in my arms.
Even while I try to forget, the world can never let go of our story. After his initial disappearance, once the press got a whiff of it, it was hard to even step foot outside of my tower. The other avengers, my friends, tried their best to help us. They helped us look and did whatever they could. Now, the number of articles and conspiracy stories published have decreased immensely but, each year on his birthday, at least one article gets put up.
Another year passed and the billionaire and CEO of Stark Industries Tony Stark and Pepper Pott's child is still missing and presumed dead.
His birthday was nearing soon. Another memory lost. Another special moment of parties and cake and candles denoting the ages gone. He would have been sixteen next week.
YOU ARE READING
Not Anymore
FanfictionS-20 has only ever known one thing, Hydra, until one man came into his life and showed him that there was so much more. That man was his first friend. His older brother. But after one night, the two were ripped apart and S-20 cannot even remember hi...
