Stocking: rowantreewrites || the-faultofdaedalus

[stevetony_elf]

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Username: rowantreewrites/the-faultofdaedalus

AO3 Username: Rowantreeisme

Comics Steve/Tony: early 616 (ToS, Avengers), Ultimates

Other Fandoms/Ships/Characters:MCU (Steve/Tony, Tony/Natasha), The Murderbot Diaries

Likes:angst, hurt/comfort, Avengers as family, Tony's usual brand of self-loathing, fluff, identity porn, time loops, space/sci-fi aus of any kind, body horror

Dislikes: rape, incest, bodily fluids excluding blood, daddy kink, would prefer nothing explicit

Non-fandom related requests/anything else?: Sci-fi book recs and podfic recs are always great!

Comments

[ironlawyer]

Here is some AI Tony angsting about his humanity that I wrote for you. Hope you enjoy!

--
Sometimes Tony forgets he isn't human anymore. He reaches for something, (for someone), or wonders why he can't smell his morning coffee brewing. It's like missing a step, or slipping on ice - feeling the stomach he doesn't have anymore drop.

He recalls many times when he hasn't felt quite human - the mechanical heart, the first days of Extremis. Now though, it's more than just a feeling. He is a holographic replication of the electric impulses that once represented the mind of Tony Stark. Nothing more.

He cannot touch those he loves, cannot offer or receive comfort. His physical body is as hollow as his soul.

Yet he aches. Its odd, he thinks, that he can feel something so physical and so intense, but only the bad parts. The phantom pain of a body missing in its entirety.

He is cold. Or not. Not cold. He knows he can't be cold or tired or hungry and yet he feels it all. A yearning for warmth, for rest, for comfort.

He drifts to Steve.

His beacon of comfort. His heart has always weighed a little less in Steve's presence.

But Steve is not Steve. His comfort is an illusion. The siren's song meant to lure him in, blind him to the danger beneath the surface. Steve promises the world: we will find a way to get you a body, Tony. He cups his hand to Tony's cheek like he can feel him.

Tony needs this.

In a fucked up twist of irony, he thinks at times that its only Steve's affection that keeps him from losing himself. Without Steve, it would not be so hard to embrace Steve's newfound ideology.

He knows his Steve is still out there somewhere. Tony owes it to him to remain strong. Take what comfort he can get, let the destruction wash through him as everything else does. Be so fucking zen he'd make Stephen Strange proud.

Worm his own thoughts and words into Steve's brain as subtle and insidious as Steve does so to him. Lean in to the icy feeling down his spine each time Steve says hail hydra. Save people where he can and store it in his memory banks when he can't.

That's all it is.

Steve is not his magnetic north. The ease he feels for a moment when he looks at this Steve is just an illusion. He tells himself he would walk away from this parody of his old friend if the world didn't need him, if the real Steve didn't need him.

He tells himself a lot of things. The things Tony Stark thought he should tell himself.

Steve is an illusion. But so is Tony.

[rowantreewrites]

!!!!!! thank you so much! i love this so so much. i am very tired and cannot word but i love the way they're tethered together. they need eachother, but not the wrong versions, but that has to be enough. i LOVE ai angst and you do it oh so well <3