"You're not going to lose me." He's stuck around this long, Gene - you're not going to shake him off any time soon. "You want to make things right, and I want to be there to help you."
Gene's still holding the uneaten fruit and staring at it like it insulted his fashion sense. Tony sighs. "You should eat your dinner." He picks another fruit off the plate, and starts nibbling at it himself to encourage Gene to do the same.
After he's taken a few bites, Tony starts talking again. "You know my dad used to make weapons, right? Stark International used to be as bad as Hammer Multinational. He shut down the weapons manufacturing division when I was born and never told me about it. I was really pissed about that for a while, too. I asked him about it, and... he said he wanted to make up for his mistakes. He didn't want to raise a family in a world where he was causing violence and profiting off it. It's not like he can go back and... un-invent all the stuff he made and undo the harm it caused, but he said he wants to spend the rest of his life making stuff that will help people, instead. So, that's... I think that's what you have to do. Just keep trying to help people. Whatever you did in the past, you can do good things in the future. Maybe you can't ever make up for what you did, but if you let that drag you down, and you just give up... then all the good things you could do are never going to get done."
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Gene's still holding the uneaten fruit and staring at it like it insulted his fashion sense. Tony sighs. "You should eat your dinner." He picks another fruit off the plate, and starts nibbling at it himself to encourage Gene to do the same.
After he's taken a few bites, Tony starts talking again. "You know my dad used to make weapons, right? Stark International used to be as bad as Hammer Multinational. He shut down the weapons manufacturing division when I was born and never told me about it. I was really pissed about that for a while, too. I asked him about it, and... he said he wanted to make up for his mistakes. He didn't want to raise a family in a world where he was causing violence and profiting off it. It's not like he can go back and... un-invent all the stuff he made and undo the harm it caused, but he said he wants to spend the rest of his life making stuff that will help people, instead. So, that's... I think that's what you have to do. Just keep trying to help people. Whatever you did in the past, you can do good things in the future. Maybe you can't ever make up for what you did, but if you let that drag you down, and you just give up... then all the good things you could do are never going to get done."