He Killed My Mom

What if it really was just a car crash, a car crash that Maria Stark survived?

Six days before Christmas, Maria Stark walks away from a car that is twisted and burning and wrapped around a tree. It is a metal coffin but not her own and scattered across the universe six voices scream wrong, wrong, wrong.

Maria won’t say it; Maria will never say it, but it is better without Howard. Her Tony, her boy, seventeen and cutting himself on his own sharp edges, burns so much brighter now. Maria had never seen the shadow his father cast, but she notices now that it is gone. How could anyone not?

How could anyone not notice the way Obadiah casts a similar shade? He was Howard’s best friend, but maybe that’s the problem. Maria doesn’t let him spend a minute alone with her son. She knows Tony can tell what she’s doing, but surprisingly he lets her.

Without Obadiah, Tony’s brilliance is blinding.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, come the whispers from across the universe, but Maria doesn’t hear.

Tony brings a boy home. He introduces himself as Jim but Tony calls him Rhodey. Maria has been working at smoothing the sharpness in her son’s soul but with Rhodey it is like it was never there at all.

Tony cries when Maria meets Roberta Rhodes and gains a new best friend. He doesn’t flinch from the tears and Maria sends a silent thank you out to the universe.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, it screams silently back.

Maria is afraid when Tony becomes CEO at only twenty one. His Rhodey has gone to war and his smiles are sharper than they have been since his father’s body burned. But he works fast and he works smart and within the year Obadiah no longer works for Stark Industries and with two the company has made its last weapon.

Tony wears his sharp edges like a cloak that he shrugs off every time he walks through her door. They’re a tool, just like everything else in his clever hands, and they no longer cut his skin.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Tony brings home a girl. She introduces herself as Virginia but Tony calls her Pepper. Her tongue is as quick as his but it is never sharp. Not with Tony, and not with Rhodey. Tony still clings to his hand even as he blushes when Pepper laughs. It’s an unorthodox arrangement but when has her boy ever been ordinary? Later, Tony cries again when Maria tells him it’s no surprise he has enough love in his heart for two people.

Later still, Maria cries when she meets her first grandchild. JARVIS is very like his namesake and very like Tony and sometimes she can’t look at her son straight on because he flares so brightly.

Tony Stark saves the world. He builds robots and hospitals and solar panels and even one day fixes his father’s old arc reactor plans. He discovers a whole new element and in a storage unit belonging to an agency Tony will never meet Howard’s notes sit untouched. Tony never sees a video that calls him a creation.

Someone else has heard six voices screaming wrong, wrong, wrong. Someone who thinks he can make it right, right, right. Someone who is horribly, completely wrong.

Captain America is found and Maria sees the briefest flicker in Tony’s light. For a moment she wonders if it was Howard’s shade after all. But then Tony declines to meet him and just goes on burning.

For some reason, Tony blames himself when New York is destroyed. He’s always done that, but this time he doesn’t believe Maria when she tells him it is not his fault. He doesn’t know why he feels he should have been there and Maria doesn’t know what to tell him.

Now, sometimes, she catches him rubbing his chest. He looks surprised when she asks if he’s in pain but that doesn’t stop her worry. There are other times when something almost hums wrong, wrong, wrong within her and it takes everything she is not to listen.

Peggy Carter dies and Tony and Maria hold each other up through their grief. It was expected and Peggy hadn’t been herself in a long time and in some ways it is almost a relief. But the loss of her is still raw and tender and hurts, hurts, hurts.

Tony cries at the funeral and cries again two months later when he tells her that Pepper is pregnant. Maria doesn’t bother to ask if it’s Tony’s or Rhodey’s; the baby will always be both Tony and Rhodey’s. Still, Maria’s heart sings when she sees that Morgan has Tony’s eyes.

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. And this time the right person hears. He holds a green light in scarred and shaking hands and listens to what the universe has been crying since six days before Christmas, twenty five years ago. He listens, and he sets out to find Maria Stark.

Stephen Strange does not know what he is asking of her. He shows her an alternate path of history and the future it is too late to avoid and asks her to choose.

Maria says no.

The weight of that refusal sounds like her heart beating wrong, wrong, wrong. But Stephen Strange never knew what he was asking of her. If he had known he would not have shown her the other Tony. The Tony who in some ways lit up the world even more brilliantly than the son she knows, but who flickers and falters with every breath. The man who’s sharp edges grew into him until he is open and bleeding and there for anyone to reach out and break.

Maria would rather see a world of ash than her son turn into that.

Stephen Strange comes back. This time he does not ask Maria. She comes in from the garden with Morgan on her hip and dirt up to her elbows and he is sitting at the kitchen table and not offering a word of comfort to Tony as he cries.

Her son looks up at her and Maria wants to scream. Her Tony should never look like that. That expression belongs to the other Tony, the one made of iron who suffered more than anyone should ever have to, who suffered so her Tony didn’t.

“Okay,” says Tony, staring at her, but speaking to Strange. “Do it.”

Six days before Christmas a man who is not a man anymore walks away from a car that is twisted and burning and wrapped around a tree. Maria and Howard Stark die within minutes of each other.

Right, right, right, six voices scattered across the universe whisper.