A line I wrote in an SG-1 fic keeps coming back to me when I think about Tony's dad. Remembering those years with the perspective of adulthood allowed him to evaluate events differently than he had as he'd lived through them. While, yeah, Tony (canon!Tony, not Damage!Tony) has an on-going, if apparently distant, relationship with his dad, how much of his perspective is based on the fact that he may only really know his dad from the perspective of his childhood. So much of parent/child relationships are mired in years of emotional detritus and it can be *hell* trying to clear it away to see if the foundation's solid, cracked or even still there at all.