Five Times Obadiah Stane Cloned Tony Stark

[quigonejinn]

Yeah, I thought I was done with clones, too, but hrdazka started suggesting some variants that neither I nor jamaillith had thought of. Which, for those of you who are following along at home, jamaillith and me put together five fics about five different Clony Starks:

#1 - The Prototype. [PG - 490 words.]
#2 - The Golden Goose. [PG-13 - 404 words.]
#3 - The Ghosts In The Machine. [R - 4,871 words.]
#4 - The Patient Man. [PG - 1,440 words.]
#5 - The Happy Ending. [R - 2,584 words.]

#5 - The Happy Ending, which is 99.99% by jamaillith, is hands down my favorite. Read it if you don't read any of the others. It's just spectacular and heartbreaking. Seriously. She has an ear for the way that Tony and Rhodey talk to each other, and oh man. Oh man.

Comments

'Cos arms dealing is such a black-and-white business

[deiseach.livejournal.com]

"I don't have it straight in my head, but it's interesting. And it's interesting to think about what Tony's life would have been like if he'd just never stepped up to take a role at Stark Industries. Or if he'd left running the company entirely to O."

It raises a lot of questions. Like, if Howard was still alive and running the company, would Obie have had the opportunity to do the same kind of under-the-table deals? Did Obie start these kinds of deals when Howard was alive? Would Howard have gotten his hands dirty in these kinds of deals - that's a big question, and a hell of a one regarding 'the Stark legacy'.

If Obie had left Stark Industries early, would it have achieved the same level of success? I get the impression that Howard (and Tony even more so) were great at the inventing, great at the charming and the PR, not so great at the nuts and bolts details of running a company.

Obadiah probably is largely to thank for Tony being a billionaire (in the sense of building up the company to that level). How much of the business involved dodgy deals, though? Maybe an awful lot more than Tony would like to know about.