Battlefield ｡ Tony Stark

49 - THE START OF TROUBLE

Baby steps was the only notion that I truly believed in, the idea that after trauma, tragedy, suffering, addiction, anything that haunts a person's soul, baby steps was the only way to truly work up the courage and strength to move on and grow. 

Long before the days of Samuel, before the days of Tony Stark, I had been a child watching my mother spiralling into the darkness of depression and the use of alcohol to numb her pain. I had only been eleven years old when the idea had been placed into my tiny mind. The idea that it was okay, quite normal, to waste away my youth and possible potential with drugs and alcohol. That was something my mother had not intentionally taught me, but children imitated adults and well, I saw my mother down her sorrows with cheap boxed wine and thought that was normal. So, that's what I did. 

All through high school and the early days of college, I had numbed my own pain with anything and everything I could get my hands on. I had tasted that delightful escape from my own mind, my own life, that it seemed so much better to forget about my problems than life among the living and watch the world spin and change from a personal state of bliss. A bliss that only lasted a brief moment in time, until another pill was placed on the tip of my tongue or another gulp of vodka passed my lips. 

Nothing had mattered back then and young Tilda Hardings had been quite fine wasting away her life, maybe even in order to finally feel something real in a messed up world. But all that had changed because of one man, slowly dying of his own pain. When Tony Stark quite literally, crashed my fake bliss, everything changed. It was not easy, not for me, trying to pull myself back up and rehab was long and tiring. That's where the idea of baby steps was first drilled into my head, because how was one supposed to grow and mend from such destruction? How was I, naive and self-destructive, supposed to plan for the future without looking back at my dark past? Baby steps.

You took one day at a time. You continued to keep living and trying to mend yourself with tiny notions that things would get better, only if you wanted them to however. It was a long battle, sometimes a never ending war with yourself, but with tiny, itty bitty, steps in the right direction, someone even with the greatest of horrors in their heart, could become better. 

So, that's what Tony Stark did. 

However, even the mightiest and cleverest of souls could not keep the fires from burning bright in the darkness and sometimes our demons really did come back to haunt us. 

***

"Tell me again why you're forcing me to hang out with you and run errands?" Samuel asked with a groan, following behind me and scowling at bypasses who attempted to give him a friendly smile, almost likely trying to suck up to the boss's kid. My heels clicked on the overly polished floors of Stark Industries as we weaved through security. 

I sent a look over my shoulder at him. "Because you need sunlight, kiddo. You've gone all ghostly white since you've been spending all your time downstairs with Tony. Kids needs fresh air and vitamin D." I told him, which only left him to frown some more. I didn't tell him that I didn't like him spending so much time with Tony, working away on all those Iron Man suits and forgetting to sleep and eat like a heathy person. "Come on, don't you wanna' hang out with your mother? The woman who birthed you and raised you, and thank-goodness, gave you her good looks."

Samuel shook his head. "You're literally forcing me to hang out with you, mum. Don't you have other friends for running errands with? What about Aunt Lucy? She's always thrilled for mind-numbing boring adult things." 

I slung my arm around his shoulders, forcefully pulling him closer to me. Up ahead I had spotted Happy Hogan, who was far too interested in glaring at some man sitting in the lobby. "Let me tell you a secret. I hate this whole moody angsty teenager thing you've got going on, when are you going to snap out of it and be my little boy again?" I flashed him a smile before planting my lips to his cheek as he wiggled away from me and rubbed at my lipstick smudge.