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When it came to his childhood, Tony Stark had the typical rich kid childhood with a hard-working father and a loving mother. At least that was what the world believed. The truth was far more sinister than the public knew. Even his closest friends were ignorant to what kind of horrors he experienced as a child.
There was an almost invisble scar underneath his right eye from the time his father slapped him and his ring cut into his skin. At the time, he had been five years old. His mother held him close, whispering that he needed to keep quiet. Father would return with the belt if he heard him sobbing.
Eight small scars on his arms, four on each of them, from when his mother clutched onto him tightly and her nails broke his skin. Hand-like bruises were blossoming around his neck. Moments before she grabbed onto his arms, she had been strangling him on the ground while screaming out words he could barely understand.
Then there was the massive scars along his back. He made sure that people believed they were a product of Afghanistan. The men tortured him there so leading people to believe the lie was easier than explaining the long nights his father would whip him for rude behavior and failed experiments. Sometimes it was for nothing at all.
When he discovered that he was going to be sent away to attend a boaring school, he broke down and cried. That earned him another slap that sent him onto the ground but the euphoria numbed him to his unkind father and mentally ill mother looming over him. He would finally leave the hell he had lived in since he was born.
Later on, people were told that his parents died in a tragic car accident. People would watch the seventeen year old boy as he stared at the caskets where his parents laid without a single tear. Some believed as the surviving Stark turned to leave the cemetery that there was a ghost of smile as he walked through the crowd.
The truth about their deaths would become a secret that only Obadiah Stane and Tony knew. His mother had finally been consumed by the depression and cut into her wrists, deep enough that the white of her bones could be seen, inside the pool. The maid discovered his mother the following morning. His father paid for the maid to receive treatment for the horror she had stumbled upon, requiring immediate hospitalization in a psychiatric ward.
At some point after their deaths, Tony realized that his mother had been suffering with postpartum psychosis. Had he remained inside the house, there was a chance she would have wrapped her cold hands around his neck and continued strangling him even after his vision began to blur.His father passed away a month after her death, having drank himself to death.
There would always be that child that wanted to believe his parents were good people with broken hearts but the man Tony had become knew that his parents were nothing more than two human beings that took their frustrations out on what had once been an innocent child and to him, there was no excuse for their actions.
He remembered being a child and grabbing onto both ends, bending it until it snapped. It took him a while to realize that was exactly what he had been to his parents. A pencil they bent and bent and bent, waiting anxiously for the day he would snap. He would never give them the satisfaction. Even years after their deaths, he would never give in and break. Because if he did, he would giving them exactly what they wanted. But he could thank his parents for one thing and one thing only.
As he watched his son run around the backyard with his husband close behind, he thanked his parents for showing him what a real parent looks like.
A real parent encourages their child to express themselves. A real parent wants to hear about each and every single thing that runs through their mind. A real parents holds them close when they have a nightmare or just because they want a hug. A real parent never lays a hand on their child, never gives them reason to believe they’re not loved. A real parent loves their child.
He swore from the moment Steve Rogers, the sweetest and kindest man to walk the earth, asked him out to dinner with a blush across his cheeks that he would never become the person his parents were.
When Steve mentioned in passing, a desperate attempt to appear nonchalant, about adopting a child, Tony swore that he would never become the parent his own were.
And when Peter Stark-Rogers opened his eyes for the first time, Tony swore that he would move the sun and earth for him to make sure he knew how much his parents loved him.
He thanked Howard and Maria Stark for showing him what a real parent looks like in all the things they did do and all the things they didn’t do.
“Honey, look at what Peter can do!” Steve called out, throwing him that all-American smile that makes his knees go weak. Tony started clapping his hands, cheering as their son did a cartwheel in their backyard.
There must have been something in his eyes because within a second, he was underneath two of the most important people in his life.
“I love you, Daddy.” Peter chimed with a blinding smile. Tony kissed his forehead and returned his smile,
“I love you too, buddy.”