chapter i.
(   pre-iron man   )

i wish you'd hold me when i turn my back
the less i give the more i get back
oh, your hands can heal, your hands can bruise
i don't have a choice, but i'd still choose you
poison & wine ━━ the civil wars

stark manor
february 16, 2000
(   tony's point of view   )

The Beginning.

I didn't think it was going to begin like this.

I swear to God, I didn't think it was going to begin like this.

To have your life start with something like this, it was the perfect recipe for destruction. Maybe I wouldn't have even taken custody of Lisa if I had known this was going to happen, if I had known that I was going to be like this. She could have been shipped off to some nice, middle-class family in some suburban part of Minnesota. Maybe there she would have been surrounded by a whole festering pack of five suffocating siblings and two incredible parents who knew what the heck they were doing.

Instead, what did that kid get? No siblings, no mom, just me. And the definition of me, well, it wasn't pretty. When I wasn't drunk out of my mind, getting some hot leggy blonde's number, or working my butt off at my company, I was sitting and staring off into space, trying to remember what the point of this was. I mean, come on, I was just this stupid kid who was as damaged as his own kid was, though it wasn't like he'd admit that. Right, because not coming out with your problems is the best way to handle them.

I was such an idiot.

I let out sigh as my head fell back and my shoulders and spine pressed into the wallpapered wall. The crystal chandeliers hung limply up above me and gold light illuminated my twenty-one year old face. Loud music pounded through the floorboards and I could feel the rhythm of it through my dress shoes. Men and women alike were shouting and cheering down below, probably being loud enough to make the cops come knocking with complaints from the neighbors that lived nearly a mile away. My hand was barely holding onto the rounded top of a solo cup, almost completely full of its burning contents. I wasn't sure why I was up here and not down there, once again successfully losing just a few moments to the peace that came with the nothingness.

It was agony.

You know, to be.

I had never found actually living to be so Godawful as it was during those first months after it happened. I found stupid, senseless joy in worthless things because they passed the time. Now time had stopped in the wake of the New Year when I sort of lost my kid and, as an effect of that, Pepper and Aunt Peg tore into me. I guess you could say that I woke up. I came to realize that I had to get my act together.

I let out another deep breath through my nose before I rolled from my back onto my shoulder. Then I was facing a big door that had a white sheet of paper messily taped to it. When she was little, Lisa always conveyed her thoughts much better through writing than speaking. Even with her vocal chords healed, she still struggled to get the right words out without stuttering or jumbling them, although, let's be honest, that didn't stop her from her near constant jabbering. I squinted under the lighting that suddenly felt very harsh and my fingers pulled the sheet off the wood so that I could read the crayoned message.

KEEP OUT STRANGER DANGERS. Unless you have chocolate milk. But you're still a stranger, so just leave the chocolate milk by the door. I'll know where to look.

Oh, what a wordsmith.

I snorted a little. I seriously did have the weirdest kid. Ever since Aunt Peg warned Lisa against the so-called "hooligans" her father, apparently, constantly entertained, she'd been very reclusive whenever I had a party, but this, this was a new development.

My hand pushed at the big door and the black of the room met my gaze. Her curtains were pulled slightly open, allowing only some light of the half moon to spill in. Amidst the otherwise swallowing darkness, a small and dark-headed form sat straight up in a sea of baby pink blankets. Teary blue eyes rose to meet my brown ones as I stood in her doorway. She didn't speak or even offer me one of her usual small smiles. She had resigned to not really speaking or doing much of anything again lately. I wasn't really sure why. Everyone all suggested it might have been the newly turned four year old's way to cope with it being the two month anniversary of... well, it. Still, I couldn't help but think that her silence was my fault.

"Too loud to sleep, huh?" it was the first thing I said to her, my voice barely reaching her over the sounds of the music still blaring downstairs.

And Lisa barely nodded in response. She leant over and touched her fuzzy covered feet, distractedly pulling at her little toes as she avoided my gaze. She was wearing one of those little kid onesies again. Jarvis and Pepper thought it was adorable and they bribed her with ice cream so that she would tolerate the bunny-styled pajamas. Her small gray hood and rabbit ears hung down her back and the fluffy material cuddled up into her baby cheeks.

"Sorry," I mumbled in reference to the music, bumping the side of my head against the door.

She gave a shrug before she began to scrounge under the blankets and then pulled out what looked like a stack of papers.

"Whatcha been doing? Drawing again?" I tried to get her to come out of herself, trying to be her dad again.

She only half-nodded once more before she began to sort through the stack of papers. I just watched her as the moon lit off of her glossy hair. She was still so little. To have seen so much was going to shape her in ways I couldn't even begin to imagine. It was already clear that her days with her mother were going to affect her, but I couldn't help but wonder if being in that car that night two months prior was going to even be worse for her in the future. Somehow I got the feeling that it would.

I didn't need another thing to be angry at Howard for. He lost control of the car. He killed himself. He killed my mom. He ruined my daughter. He ruined me. There wasn't any kind of recompense for that, no way to find peace with that, no way to get revenge.

"It's for you," her scratchy voice caught my attention and I saw that her arm was raised as a paper quivered in her grip.

I stepped closer and gently took it from her. My eyes studied the picture and it took me a moment to figure out what it actually was that my four year old had drawn. I think there was a car and it looked to be on fire. Two red-colored figures were sitting in the front of the car with 'X's in the places where their eyes should've been. Another figure, a much smaller one with blue dots for eyes, was covered in the same red color as she stood outside the car. The entire drawing was covered in a thin layer of gray crayon, making me not see all that clearly.

"Lisa," I breathed out carefully, looking up at my daughter with a horrified expression.

She gave a sad shrug.

"Why in heck would you draw this?!" I demanded, thrusting the picture back around for her to look.

She wouldn't look at it as her tiny hands found the pajama's rabbit ears, "I-I'm sorry. It's best I could do for you, Da-Daddy."

My brows furrowed as my anger turned to confusion, "What?"

Her face contorted and she stared out the window as she whispered, "I tried to 'member for you."

My eyes widened before I looked back down at the picture. She was trying to remember what happened on December 16th... so that I could get the peace that I needed. I guess she was just too young to understand that I would never find it, no matter what she drew, no matter what happened. Sitting down beside her, I let out a quiet breath and I pushed the picture to my chest. I had just wrapped an arm around her small shoulders before she crawled across the mattress and plopped her bony booty onto my lap. I kissed her head, but she suddenly pulled away with a gagging expression. She poked her tongue out, scrunched up her nose, and shook her head, all the while mumbling indistinctly.

"You okay?" I crooked an eyebrow at her.

Lisa spoke in a suspicious tone, squinting up at me, "You smell funny."

"A lot of cologne and a bit of alcohol, Baby."

"Not a good mix," she quietly informed me.

"True," I agreed with a nod.

We sat in silence for a few more moments before she rested the palms of our hands together, sprawling out my fingers with hers, "Daddy, promise."

"Promise what, Lees?" I peered down at her, still holding her drawing to my chest.

She sucked in a quick, desperate breath as if that ravaging panic was filling up her chest once again. She had been experiencing a bit more of that recently and I had no clue what an effect that would have on her as the years passed.

"You said to promise. Promise what?" I quickly repeated, trying to get her mind off of the still strangling panic.

Taking in another breath, her eyes lifted and her pink lips twisted, "Promise it's okay. I miss them too and, and, I-I can't 'm-member," tears filled her eyes and she fought hard against them, "'M sorry I ca-can't, Daddy."

"Hey, hey," I put my two fingers on the corners of her lips, turning them up into a smile as she had always done for me, "It's okay, Lisa. It's not your fault. It was never your fault."

"Daddy," her voice was so much stronger and more insistent than I had ever heard it, "You gotta promise."

"I promise. It's not your fault. Don't ever believe that anything even close to relating to this is your fault."

She nodded quickly, pulling her arms and her knees up into herself as she shrunk back into me.

And so, sitting in four year old Lisa's bedroom, two months after all that we had died, I knew it was time. It was time for me to be there for her. It was time for everything to start again, for time to catch up, for life to begin again. I guess I just didn't know what I was asking for. I didn't know what was coming. Maybe I would have stopped it. Maybe I would have found some way to make time stop or to get Lisa away from Obadiah, from Edgar, from New York, from Killian, from everything. Maybe I would have found a way to get Lisa away from me. God, who can say anything now? There are just too many maybe's and what if's to make any difference. The beginning has come and gone, and we all have to live with that.

We sat quietly for a few more moments before I mumbled into her hair, "I promise it's okay, I'll make everything okay."

But I couldn't.

And I didn't.

What did you think?! I have successfully, hopefully, carried their story line in the past from before the accident, during the accident, right after the accident, and then coming back together. Tadaa. And this is how I start off Poison and Wine: with broken promises and sad things. How typical. Seriously disturbed over her, and, by the end of this story, you are going to believe it as well. I know this chapter title was very similar to a The red Raven one, but it's a parallel with the next chapter so it'll make sense. Alrighty, leave your comments! See ya next chapter!

Obligatory Funny Thingamabob:

Pretty much though, basically ALL of my tv shows