#mama!verse

After months, have chapter 12 of the mama!verse. 

His mother had been on a philanthropic trip to Geneva at the time of that gala, and hadn’t been due back for another three days, but apparently there had been rumours of some… indiscretions with aristocratic men while she had been there. Tony’s father, ever the jealous, drunken animal, had summoned her back like she was his property. Worse than that, Howard had told her that Tony, then just twenty-one, had fallen off the wagon, had gone on a life threatening binge and that he needed his mother. It wasn’t true; Tony had actually, at the time, been on the wagon for a full year.

Howard had made Tony accountable.

She had come back, realised that Tony was fine, and they had argued like Tony had never quite seen them before. Afraid that something terrible would happen to her if he left her alone with his father, Tony had called Obadiah over to try and calm them both down. They weren’t speaking to one another as they left the house to head to the gala that night, to put on a strong front against all the rumours, but they had gone together.

The next Tony heard, the brakes on the car had been cut, and both of his parents were dead.

He had gone over the situation so many times in his head since, and so many things could have been done to save his mother’s life. Whether she was actually having an affair was none of his business, and he wouldn’t have blamed her if she was, because Tony had always been the first one to admit that his father was brute. If Howard hadn’t heard, or if she’d refused to come back to America early, she would still have been alive. If Tony hadn’t called Obie, maybe he wouldn’t have convinced them to go to the gala together. Maybe if Tony had intervened instead, or if his mother had just refused to go with Howard, she’d still be alive. Shit, if they’d taken a different car, his mother would still be alive.

Tony knew, logically, that Barnes was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, that it wasn’t really his fault at all that Tony’s mother had died along with his father in that car that night. The problem was that he was something physical, a point to which Tony could direct all his hate, all his pain.

“He doesn’t mean anything by it, Buck,” Steve sighed as they watched Tony disappear into the elevator, James tucked under his arm like a damn football.

“Yeah, he does,” Buck replied easily, shifting ever so slightly so Peter could place a magnet on an empty bit of his arm. “And he’s got every right to be angry.”

“He’s not angry,” Steve disagreed with a sigh. “He’s just… it’s harder for him –“

“Because I took out his folks?” Bucky hummed, and then winced a little as Lily dug a pink, glittery butterfly clip a little too hard into his scalp.

“That wasn’t you –“

“Wasn’t it?” Bucky asked him quietly, not quite catching Steve’s eye as he spoke. “It’s all… so muddled, still. Sometimes I don’t know what was me and what was him, and it’s… it’s hard, Steve. It’s so fu – darn hard to keep a lid on everything when I wake up some days swearing blind I enjoyed every second of what I did to all those people.”

Have a fluffy filler chapter!