Kid, tell me what happened: The Sequel

I just, really miss him

Full title: I just, really miss him

A/N: This is a whopping 4K words, and HOLY DAMN do I feel accomplished with myself, being that I wrote this fic in two days.  So buckle your seat belts hes, shes, they/thems, non-binary folk, all possible gender and sexuality folk for this eight page long fan fiction of 4K words. 

Summary: Tony’s eyes are red and puffy and acts like a shadow of the man he once was, “I just really miss him. He didn’t deserve to die.”

Nebula nods knowingly, “No one deserves to die, except for Thanos. Tell me about him.”

[TW: Mention of probable sucidie]

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Tony Stark and pain are old friends. They’ve met in a variety of forms. One of the first times they met was when Howard struck five year old him with a belt because he didn’t have time for his childish antics. Tony remembered the way his heart broke into itty bitty pieces when his father had scowled at him with such a dire look of hate, he wanted to die right at that very moment. A not too long experience was when his father had harshly smacked him when he entered a room full of Howard and some other men he had never met before and told him to “get lost or I’ll lock you in the closet for three days.” Either way, he was locked in the closet with fear and anger that his father could never be nice to him for once in his damn life. 

And it had continued on for fifteen years. Every time Tony had tried to prove to Howard that he was capable of the man’s astounding legacy, the older man would just shun him away, or call him an “insolent being with no regard that other people are more important than him.” Every single day his father compared all of his actions to the mighty heroic Captain America, and made sure that Tony knew that he “would never be more important than Captain America, and if you ever met him, he’d be so disappointed in you.” Tony refused to leave his room for an entire week, shutting away everyone in their mansion and crying himself to sleep every single night in the only spot that was deemed safe. 

But that spot soon became worthless because Howard would take little mistakes, or just movements in general, and twist them into things that Tony should be ashamed of himself, to the point where Tony has just stopped caring, because for fifteen long and grueling years of his life he had spent to try and get his father, the most important man in his life to see some form of potential in him, only for him to receive shit for it. And he knew Howard, and Howard would never change. 

Howard would keep on hitting Tony whenever he made a sarcastic quip at the man. Howard would threaten to send Tony back to boarding school if Maria didn’t love the utter failure of a son he was. Howard would lock Tony in his room for periods of time that would range from a couple of hours to a few weeks. 

To say that Tony hated the man was an understatement. Just the mere mention of his name was enough to send anger coursing through his veins and the loathing feeling to form in his heart, as his fingers would stiffen and curl into a fist, and his brain would helplessly play the memories that would forever be engraved in his heart and soul. 

Which is why whenever the topic of settling down came up, he’d panic. Tony always wanted to settle down, but he didn’t want to repeat the same mistakes his father had made on him, and he didn’t know how to be a good father. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he failed something of his own creation.