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NOTES:
First, a really deep thank you to Elliott, Clint, and Olivia for helping me with this story (also, thanks mom for all the transcription help, even if you didn’t know what it was for!).
I wrote this fic over the course of 2-3 days—completely ridiculous process of personal pain and research and agony. I rewrote Tony’s origin as a Vietnamese-American person (also I made him born in 1986, because the 90’s are all I know how to write). He is also queer, but the story itself deals very little with his being queer (and the intersectionality that results), and for that I apologize deeply. I’m still navigating those spaces myself, so it’s really difficult for me to write about.
And finally, I struggle a lot with being Vietnamese but also being USAmerican. I grew up in one world with another world’s lenses, and that lens often appears flawed. Still, I just want to say—thank you to my mom, who showed me that dragons aren’t always the frightening Arthurian kind. Sometimes they have the horns of a deer, the feet of a tiger, and a heart of steel.
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AO3 version: [here]
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Key for Understanding Vietnamese (in this Story and as I See It):
—Me: (soft “e”) Mom
—Ba: (soft “a”) Dad
—Con: (soft “o”) Usually what a parent/older relative uses to refer to a child.
—Chao: (like “chow”) Usually what an older person uses to refer to a young person.
—Da: (pronounced like “yah”; “d” makes the “y” sound) Yes. You also says, “Da tu” which is just a polite way of addressing someone higher up on the hierarchy than you are.
—Cam on: Thank you.
—Ong: (long “O”) Usually how you talk to someone who is a lot older than you are.
—nhau: A concept of drinking in Vietnam where you drink a lot, play card games, etc. It’s not necessarily going to a bar. Usually men partake in this; it’s sort of a macho sort of activity where men “hang out” with one another.
—tam bay tam ba: A term used to refer to something that is taboo/bad, often applied to sex when speaking to younger people. It can be sort of translated into “fooling around,” but that’s very inexact.
—Tuc Sac: A popular card game using Chinese chess cards.
—Tet: Lunar New Year festival.
*
On the first day of kindergarten, the teacher didn’t know how to pronounce his first name. “Twain? Toe-an? Toe-one?”
He sunk in his seat and hid his face in his arms. At recess he sat by himself and hid in the bushes. There were other children who looked like him, but they all looked like they know each other. He ate lunch by himself: rice and soy sauce his mom packed him in a box along with some meat. When the other kids in his class saw him, they called him names. Little Toe, Tiny Toe.
When his mom came to pick him up after school is over, he said, “Me, can we change my name please?”
“Huh? What? Why?” His mom frowned at him.
“No one can say it.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Let’s talk to Ba about it,” she said.
After dinner, he sat on the couch and listened to his mom and dad talk about his name in the kitchen. Her voice was soft and soothing and his was hard and loud. He sounded like he was yelling, but he kept saying ‘chi’ and ‘con.’
Finally, his dad entered the living room. He dropped a book of names on the space next to him. In his other hand he held his jacket. “I’m going to go nhau with some of my friends. Pick a name you want, and tomorrow me will get the paperwork in. Capiche?” The last word sounded thick and unnatural off his dad’s tongue.
When he frowned, his dad smiled. “I got it from a movie,” he said. “Now, pick a name. Do homework. Go to bed early. School tomorrow.”
”Da, ba.”
He spent the whole night looking at names. He finally settled for one that looks a little like his old name, but sounded completely different: Tony.
*
Tony’s dad used to work in a bioengineering lab in a university, just like Tony’s grandfather. The pay wasn’t very good, even though Tony’s dad was better than his grandfather and his grandfather had worked on a project during World War II. Tony’s dad was always complaining about the people there who couldn’t take simple directions. He yelled in something that was half-Vietnamese, half-English. His mom stood quietly in the kitchen and listened to him and then she said, “Then look for something new.”
His dad took that one step further. He made something new: Stark Industries. Soon they moved into a new home on top of a hill and teachers started coming to the home to teach Tony.
At first, Tony saw his dad less and less. His mom said he was working; the smell that reeked from his dad’s clothes said something else. When Tony turned eleven, his dad stopped leaving the house at night. Tony thought he would see him more. That they would get to play baseball in the front yard like all the other dads on TV.
Instead, his dad invited his friends over and they drank in the dining hall.
Tony had seen drinking on TV before: A bunch of pale-faced, young men in a bar, drinking beer, laughing loudly, sometimes with cards in their hands. The cards had two faces on them, one reversed, with little symbols in the corners. The men talked about women a lot.
Tony thought that was what his dad was doing, too. But sneaking in one night, watching his dad drink … The men were drinking, and they were holding cards. But the cards were thin and small, of different colors: red, green, white, and yellow. There were characters on the cards, but from his place by the door Tony couldn’t see them. Each of the men were smoking, a cigarette hanging out one side of their lips. They were all his dad’s age or even older and they were wearing suits. And inbetween their moves, they talked about Stark Industries.
His mom told him about it the next morning. “It’s called Tuc Sac. You’re too young to play it.” She squeezed his little shoulder. “Go back to studying. Me will you when it’s time to an com.”
On TV, dinner was never like at home. Tony never saw families eating rice. He saw them eating steak and chicken and salad. At home he ate rice and soup and meat with soy sauce. Even breakfast was different: sometimes he ate com tam bi, or pho. His mom made iced milk coffee for his dad in a glass cup instead of a coffee mug. When his dad left early, his mom fried eggs and they ate them with baguettes.
“It’s because baguettes and fried eggs remind him of being poor,” his mom said, “and Ba only wants to be rich.”
*
After they moved into the mansion, his mom discovered that it was too big for her to care for by herself. They put out an ad for a housekeeper.
His mom wanted a woman; his dad wanted a man. They interviewed people of many genders, and they finally settled on a pale-skinned man who had been in the Vietnam War and had become a professional boxer afterwards. He spoke perfect Vietnamese, but Tony only heard Jarvis speak it when he spoke to Tony’s mom.
It was strange to hear Vietnamese coming from someone who didn’t look like him. But Jarvis was nice. He drove Tony to school in the mornings and picked him up in the afternoons when his mom was preparing a feast.
*
Tony and his family didn’t celebrate January 1 as New Years. They celebrated a different new year, called Tet. It confused Tony: everyone would be celebrating outside when the Times Square Ball dropped, but his parents would complain about the lack of news.
When Tony asked his dad, he scoffed and started yelling. “Americans don’t know what a real New Years’ is. They use it to drink and do tam bay tam ba!” Tony didn’t exactly know what that meant, but his dad and his mom always yelled that when they saw people kissing on TV. “New Year’s is supposed to a time of reflection! You’re supposed to celebrate the good things, hope for something new, and honor your ancestors and your elders! None of this horrible junk! Do you understand?”
Tony nodded. “Da, Ba.”
The weeks before the Lunar New Year, his mom would prepare a big feast by herself while Jarvis cleaned the pots and pans. They always did the celebration at Tony’s house; his mom said it was because his dad was the first son of the first son, which meant he was special, because he was supposed to the most successful, which he was. She would make banh chang and buy lots of melon seeds, along with salty-sweet dried meat, taro cakes, and then, Tony’s favorite: she would go to Chinatown and buy Chinese candy boxes. In these boxes were his favorite dried foods: dried candied ginger, dried candied coconut, dried candy carrot slices . . .
But the joy of food came at a price. Before the arrival of his relatives, his mom would sit him down in his bed and go through his relatives. She had created a scrapbook for this very lesson. Each relative had a picture and what he was supposed to call them. Each person had a different name, depending on their relation. Tony had seven different aunts on his dad’s side, each with a different number. He had to remember which number they were. Then he had to memorize the aunts on his mom’s side, which had a different completely different name. His grandmothers both had different names; one was ba noi and the other was ba ngoai, depending on if it was his mom’s mother or his dad’s mother…
Tony spent all night memorizing it. His mom quizzed him the next morning. Then she said, “Now you have to learn greetings for New Year. Remember, it is important you know this. It is a greeting. ‘Chuc mung nam moi con chuc ba suc khoe, song lau, vui ve moi su may man den voi ba.‘ Repeat.”
They spent an hour on it. Tony had no idea what it meant. His mom said he was going to wish this to every single one of his relatives. “You’re telling them you want them to have a good year, and a good life, and that you hope they will be lucky.”
Tony discovered that it was easier the second and third time around because once he said it, and once his relatives gave him a similar greeting (something about staying in school), they would give him a little red envelope with a pretty design on the front—li xi. And inside this little envelope was money. Some of them had fives, but lots of the time his richer relatives had put fifty or even one hundred dollar bills in them.
“It’s not about money,” his dad told him. “It’s about warding off bad spirits and starting of a good year. The red here, it’s lucky. OK?”
When Tony was old enough to think about it, he thought it was strange. No one on TV ever received red envelopes, but then again, no one on TV ever looked like him, either, except in his mom’s old VHS tapes.
*
Tony studied a lot. It was the only thing he really knew how to do. His dad bought him toys sometimes, but mostly his dad bought him books. Every month his dad would come in and check on him. He would look at the all the progress reports, the tests he’d taken, and then he would turn to Tony and say, “Work harder. You’re still stupid and don’t know anything. Someday Ba is going to die, and you’re going to have to take care of your mother and you can’t do that with this knowledge. You can’t just rely on luck.”
His dad said those things a lot. “Someday I’m going to die and you’re going to have to live on your own.” “Someday Me is going to die and you’ll have to fend for yourself.” “Someday no one will take care of you except yourself.”
Tony worked hard. He wanted to be smart. He wanted to hear it from his dad someday: that he wasn’t stupid. On TV, he heard it differently. He heard parents say, “I’m proud of you.”
He would like to hear that from his dad someday, too.
*
”Ba, who is Captain America?”
It was the wrong question to ask. His dad’s eyes flared and he narrowed his eyes. “Captain America! Captain. America! That white-faced man has done nothing for our country! Did you know, your grandfather worked on parts of the Super Soldier Serum that turned that skinny white boy into a man? And what did your grandfather get? Nothing! He got kicked back to the university!”
Tony retreated back to his room with a quick apology. But he asked his mom, and she stroked his hair while she explained.
“Ba is just very sensitive about the past. As a child he heard about Captain America all the time, but he died before Ba met him. And Ong noi was very angry about being sent to university to teach again without even getting a mention in the history books.”
“Da tu me cam on.”
“Mm.”
A week later, his mother left him a wrapped box on his bed. It was a metal replica of a Captain America shield.
“For my golden son. Love, Me.”
After that, Tony started a collection of Captain America posters and paraphernalia. He hid them in the floorboards in his room and took them out at night.
He especially loved the shield. The star, the colors—Tony saw it and felt a catch in his throat.
*
Tony found out his dad was working on military contract for the government. “Building missiles!” he hears his dad yelling at his mom. “Can you believe it? How far I’ve sunk? But it pays so well. This summer we will definitely be able to go Vietnam.”
His dad said that every year. This year we will go to Vietnam! But they never went. When the summer came, his dad wrote a lot of checks, one to each family that was still in Vietnam. “You didn’t think it was only those seven aunts, did you? There are still family back in Vietnam! They don’t want to leave…” His dad clenched his fist. “They think it’s going to get better. Well, it doesn’t!” He signed the check with a fluorish.
”Me, if Ba is so angry, why does he keep sending money to our relatives back in Vietnam?”
His mother stared at him. “Well, why not? Don’t say such things. Of course we will support them in their decision to stay. Ba is not angry with them. He’s just expressing concern. You know, family is the only thing that matters. Even if they sometimes do bad things, we still have to support them. At the end of the day, your family will be the only one who supports you.”
Tony didn’t understand. But he nodded quietly. On TV, he saw children yelling at their parents and their relatives, but he would never do that. He would never disagree with either of his parents.
*
When Tony turned thirteen, he applied to MIT.
He showed his dad the acceptance letter during breakfast. His dad patted him on the head. “Work hard,” he said. “Remember you’re going to take over the company.”
Tony tried to smile, but his dad said nothing else. He just put his coat on and left to work at Stark Industries.
Tony’s mom gently stroked his hair. “Con… don’t cry. Ba is proud of you. He just never wants you to forget: You have to become a man in this world, and it isn’t easy for people like us. You can’t always rely on luck.”
*
When Jarvis heard the news, he clapped Tony on the shoulder. “Good job, Master Tony.”
“Thank you,” Tony said, voice clipped. He went to his room and slept.
When he woke up, he found a plate of candied oranges on the bedside drawer with a note.
“For a job well done,” Jarvis wrote. Tony crumpled it and threw it away, but later he asked Jarvis to watch a movie with him.
Jarvis wasn’t his dad, and it didn’t feel close, but it was something.
*
At MIT, everything was different. No one spoke Vietnamese—at least not where he could hear it. In his engineering classes, there seemed to be many people who were Vietnamese, but when he approached a student after class, hoping to make friends, he heard them start to speak in Chinese. Tony turned away in shame.
There wasn’t any Vietnamese food, either. At first, it was a novelty. The dining halls had so much chicken and steak! But after a week Tony began to miss the smell of his mother’s pho in the morning. He even missed the smell of alcohol coming from the dining hall.
His roommates weren’t very nice, either. They seemed okay at first, but when they heard Tony speaking Vietnamese on the phone with his mom, they began to laugh. He pretended not to hear them as they whispered ‘ching chong ling’ behind his back; he spoke louder when they called him a ‘chink.’ Tony masked the lump in his throat as a cough.
“Con kho sau hong?” his mom asked. [Are you okay?]
”Da tu me con khong sau,” he said. [I am fine, mother.]
His roommates laughed even louder.
Tony never called his parents when they were in the room after that. If his mom did call, he spoke to her in perfect English.
She figured it out, once. “When your dad was going to school,” she said, “he did a lot of things to be accepted. He made fun of himself a lot.”
“Yes, mom.”
His classes weren’t much better. Everything was easy, and it showed in his work. “It’s because he’s Asian,” he would hear people whisper. “They’re too smart. What’s the point of trying anyway with people like him around?” He heard other Asian classmates suffer the same fate, but when he tried to approach someone about it, they shrugged their shoulders. They were used to it.
Tony didn’t like MIT. But when his dad called, he said, “I’m working very hard. I’m getting good grades.”
“Good,” his dad would say. “Talk to your mother. She’ll tell me what’s going on.”
”Ba just busy on another military contract,” she said. “He’s expanding the industry, making it bigger… This year he wants to launch something called an ‘Expo’ so that he can get young people to work for him.”
“Can I come this year?” Tony asked.
“I’ll talk to Ba about it,” she said, “but you should focus on school.”
*
Tony sought out the Vietnamese Student Association on campus. He hung outside the meeting room and listened to the laughter and the voices.
But when he opened the door, he felt blinded by all the eager, smiling faces. Claustrophobia set in.
Tony closed the door and hurried back to his room to study. Interacting with people who seemed so comfortable with themselves, with the place they were in—Tony couldn’t fathom an idea of home that wasn’t the mansion.
*
Tony called home the moment he heard it happen. “Me, Ba, I heard what happened—”
“Don’t worry,” his mom said. “Me and Ba were at Uncle’s house. We were very far away when it happened. Con, don’t worry and keep studying. Sorrow always happen in the world, but you must move on.”
Tony watched the news as the world changed around him, but at the end of the day, his parents were still the same.
*
His second year at MIT, Tony learned how to fit in. It helped that he grew a whole foot, so now he was five foot eleven. He was still lanky and small and his knees and body hurt, but he was tall; other people in his class didn’t look at him like he didn’t belong anymore. Girls looked at him differently, too, but they looked at him differently than how they looked at his roommates, both of whom had blond hair and blue eyes and pale, pale skin. The way the girls looked at him—it still had that . . . strangeness to it. Like there was something about his almond-shaped eyes and light brown skin that made him … different. But not in a bad way. In a good way.
But it didn’t matter. It only mattered that people started noticing that he was a person, and not just a fifteen-year-old boy with slanted eyes in a school filled with older people. If that was the price he had to pay, he would deal with it.
Tony learned to drink, too. He didn’t drink anyone under the table—it was just one or two drinks a party. But that feeling of fitting in, of feeling a little bit like his dad, sitting around the table, was more than Tony had ever felt from just talking to his dad.
There were other ways in which Tony learned to fit in. He stopped talking about Tet. When people did mention it, he said he didn’t celebrate it. When it came around, he decided not to go home. His mom sighed and his dad yelled, but he wouldn’t have it. Finally, his mom collected the money for him the next time he came home. When people made jokes about Asians, Tony laughed. When they asked him what he ate at home, he said, “Steak and chicken. And corn sometimes. My mom makes good mashed potatoes.” When asked to speak Vietnamese, Tony said, “I don’t know any.”
When his classmates found out he was just like them, just with a different eye-shape, they seemed to relax. They seemed more willing to talk to him, to invite him to parties.
Tony didn’t complain. It wasn’t easy for people like him, and he knew he had to work hard.
*
Tony enjoyed one thing at MIT: creating. After he took his first mechanical design class, he went to the labs all the time. He made everything: small computers, test cell phones, a small television. He wanted to show his dad, but when he asked his mom, she said that he was reviewing files from the Stark Expo. “Mine are better,” Tony said.
“Focus on your studies,” his mother pleaded, and he never mentioned them again.
But he still worked on his designs, quietly, and drank and partied with his school friends.
Only one person he met at MIT really stuck with him. His name was James Rhodes, but people called him Rhodey. He was young, too, like Tony, just a couple years older. He didn’t like to drink or party, and he studied a lot, just like Tony did. “I had to work twice as hard as everyone here,” Rhodey said. “They’re lucky being born as they are in a world that supports them. I have to work twice as hard.”
They had few classes together, but when they did, Tony enjoyed his company. Rhodey understood him, even if he didn’t know how to have fun.
*
Tony went home his third year for Tet. Everyone commented on how tall and handsome he had grown, how he would soon be eligible for marriage. They asked if he had a girlfriend yet, did he plan on getting married?
The words hurt him, a little. He hadn’t thought about any of those things. He just wanted to make his dad proud.
But his dad wasn’t at the mansion. He was working.
For a brief moment, Tony had forgotten that for the rest of the world, it wasn’t Tet. It was just another day.
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dytabytes reblogged this from elliottmarshal and added:
/SCREA THIS IS THE MOST PERFECT EVER :D I LIKE LOVE IT A LOT
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elliottmarshal reblogged this from elliottmarshal and added:
yeah i’m just gonna bring this back around for everyone who hasn’t read the most perfect and wonderful tony stark...
entegegenwartigung reblogged this from crossedwires and added:
This is so wonderful and painful and wonderful.
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crossedwires reblogged this from skalja and added:
Yeah. It’s kind of painful to read, but in a good way.
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skalja reblogged this from maritimelegend and added:
read this. Amazing work, softie.
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spandexual said:
softiiieee ;~; this is so good, but it reminds me far too much of an old friend for me not to break down in tears ;___;
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elliottmarshal said:
it’s beautiful ;__;
akitron said:
k super excited about this. LOVE YOU SOFTIE
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