Chapter Text
The therapist he’s been forced to see in the aftermath of Siberia says, “You have PTSD,” and he has a moment of thinking no shit before he remembers that he’s never heard it said out loud before outside of the more sensationalist news reports in the wake of his return from Afghanistan. He’s never said it out loud before. Then the therapist—late thirties, grey pantsuit, dark skin and darker eyes—continues: “There are no shortage of coping strategies, but it won’t be easy, Mr. Stark. I think it could be beneficial for your friends and—well, it would be useful if they could join us for some of these sessions, to make sure you have a support structure in place.” The absence of the word family twists something in his gut. He feels sick.
“I don’t want them to know,” he says. He barely knows who he means by them. Who are his friends, anymore? Rhodey, certainly, who already knows about the anxiety attacks and who’s been a soldier long enough that he’s been able to infer the rest. Other than him…
“Why not, Tony?”
She switches between Mr. Stark and Tony like they’re interchangeable, when Tony knows that there’s all the difference in the world between the modes of address. Steve rarely called him Tony. When he did, it felt monumental, like Tony had done something to deserve it. That was often the way when it came to Steve: the small offers of friendship felt like the world, like everything important packed into a smile or a quick, grateful hug.
“I don’t know,” he admits. He feels tired, pushed past breaking point, trying desperately to sift through his brain for who his friends are—people who aren’t colleagues or admirers, who he can rely on, who’d want to attend his therapy sessions, he’s. He’s drawing a blank.
His therapist—god, her name tag’s right there; call her Emma—looks sympathetic. It might be her default expression when he’s in the room. He should pay more attention.
“There’s not really anyone who’d really, I mean—I can get Rhodey to come, but he’s got his own shit, you know? Like, he’s not really into leaving the compound at the moment, not for long anyway, although it’s getting—he’s getting—well, better? That’s the wrong word, I don’t. I don’t mean that there’s—it’s a disability, he’s learning to live with it. But I don’t think he’d want to come. When I’m here’s the only time he gets a break from me, anyway,” he says. Self-deprecating smile. The kind of smile that’s just teeth: going through the motions. “And Pepper…she says we’re still friends but she hasn’t really, uh—she’s checked in on us a couple of times but it’s still not really friendship, you know? And Vision’s AI, probably not someone you’re interested in seeing.”
Emma smiles. “Do you think there might be a reason that you think no one has time for you?”
It’s leading questions like this that’re why Tony hates therapy. Everything he says will make it seem like he has attachment issues, which he does, but it’s not… It’s just that he genuinely can’t think of anyone who’d want to be here, right now, watching him struggle over words and fidget like he hasn’t done since he was fifteen—Jesus, he feels pathetic.
“Most of my friends are superheroes.” He smiles thinly. “They tend to lead busy lives.”
She’s kind enough not to pursue the line of questioning any further, and then it’s half an hour more of him talking, frantic and quick, expecting at any moment to look up and find Emma bored, distracted, asleep. She’s been trained for this, though, and she just nods while he lays out the architecture of his week: physical therapy with Rhodey, movie nights providing lukewarm distraction, terse phone calls with Pepper and Fury, occasional emails from Maria, Vis learning to cook. He tells her about how watching Star Trek made him cry and she tells him not to be ashamed of that, which is nice and all but doesn’t even begin to approach the root of the problem, which is that he feels constantly on the verge of something: tears or trembling or a racing heart which doesn’t know that it’s meant to be healthy, fixed. He’s meant to be fixed.
“You’re not a robot, Tony,” Emma says, when the session’s coming to a close. “You need to stop expecting yourself to be.”
It’s weird, he thinks, that the more metal that’s inside him, the more human he feels. Sometimes the absence of the arc reactor feels like it’s choking him, the light scarring on his chest the only reminder. The nightmares of waking up in a cave with a car battery hooked to his heart. He wonders if normal people are as aware of the rhythm of their internal organs as he is; there’s always some part of him dedicated to monitoring his heartbeat, paying close attention to every slip, every variation, every fault. His heart had stuttered when Steve—Rogers, he corrects himself—plunged the shield into the glowing center of the suit. Psychosomatic, he guesses. He hopes.
When he gets home Rhodey’s bedroom door is closed, which means he’s either sleeping or wants to be left alone, and Vision’s nowhere to be seen, which means he’s in Maximoff’s room synthesizing a new godawful sweater. Tony misses JARVIS, sometimes, he really does. Still.
“Hey, FRIDAY,” he says, for lack of anyone else to talk to. “How’re you doing?”
FRIDAY’s response is tepid, which isn’t really her fault. He should probably consider having a conversation with an actual person. It’s a Saturday afternoon, and there’s a social life he used to have that seems desperately out of reach, now.
“Call the spider kid for me, FRI,” he instructs, determined not to pour any whiskey until it’s dark outside. Which means he needs a distraction. A good suit upgrade, that nearly always works.
Peter picks up on the third ring and doesn’t say anything, because apparently no one teaches fifteen-year-olds about phone etiquette these days. “Boy Wonder,” Tony says into the silence. “Fighting any crimes this afternoon?”
“I, uh, hi Mr. Stark—I’ve got homework,” Peter says, and Tony forces himself not to laugh. Rhodey’s told him enough times that he should at least try to be a good influence on the kid.
So, instead, he says, “Good for you,” and then: “If I get Happy to drop by and pick up your suit would you mind if I tinkered with it ‘til Monday?”
The rapturous way Peter thanks him is enough that Tony hangs up sooner than he should, pours himself some whiskey after all, calls Happy and tells him to get the suit to him within the next few hours, calls Helen Cho and asks her if she’s going to be at the facility anytime in the next couple of months. She tells him that she gets back from Berlin on Thursday, and then she says, “Missed me?” like it’s a joke and Tony doesn’t know how to respond to that, doesn’t know what to do with the wide aching spaces of the compound, with the fact that no one’s a permanent resident and he doesn’t know how to ask them to be.
He says, after a too-long pause, “You wish,” and Helen laughs, starts telling him about the conference she’s been attending and how one of the speakers acted like he’d invented the study of protein biochemistry, how she’d almost fallen asleep while he rambled on about his ‘ground-breaking’ research.
“There was this one woman,” she says, “Ariadne Lovett. You’d like her, she’s doing a lot of research into integrated prosthetics.”
“I’ll give her a call.”
He probably won’t, but Pepper might. He hasn’t even thought about Stark Industries—except in the most abstract sense—for weeks, although he knows the applied sciences division has made the news a dozen times in that period. The work they’re doing is amazing, he’s frequently told: he should pay more attention.
Helen’s just saying goodbye when Rhodey emerges from his room, unassisted by anything but the leg supports, which are whirring grumpily. Tony raises an eyebrow at him and resists the urge to offer assistance, leans back against the granite tabletop while Rhodey walks—albeit slowly—into the kitchen area.
“I’m only getting a coffee,” he says before Tony can think of a non-patronizing way to ask if he’s okay. “I don’t need the stick for everything.”
“Never said you did, sweetheart,” Tony replies, anticipating the fond eye roll and grinning at it. “Any big plans for this evening? Hot date I should know about?”
Rhodey flips him the bird as he reaches for his mug, leaning a touch too heavily on the counter. “Yeah, the King of Wakanda’s picking me up at eight,” he says. Tony laughs, passes him the sugar. “D’you want one?” Rhodey asks, and his eyes are everywhere except the glass that’s still got a little whiskey in it; it’s one of those things they don’t talk about very often, so long as Tony’s got it under control. Under control enough, anyway.
“Nah, I’m good,” Tony says, and Rhodey makes him coffee with three sugars and no milk anyway—just how he likes it.
He only has to go to therapy once a week, because he’d thrown enough of a fit as it was (and, okay, looking back it’s a little embarrassing, yelling at Fury that he was emotionally stable) but he wasn’t allowed to get one of those therapists who make house visits, because Fury and Hill were very insistent that he had to get out of the facility “at least a couple of times a week, Stark, and we’ll be making sure.”
They all have their theories, he’s sure. Pin the mental illness to the superhero, a fun game for all the family. He watches their diagnoses play out across their faces when he mentions that he’s not sleeping, that he doesn’t want to appeal (for or against) the criminal charges against the vigilante known as Captain America, when he sharply cuts off any mention of New York. They look sympathetic, curious.
It’s like they know, intellectually, that he’s human, but they keep forgetting. He feels the familiar sensation of being an attraction, only this time he’s also an oddity. Being famous should have prepared him for this, for the way he feels separated from the constructions they’re building of him, like statues of him in their minds. With plaques for them to read, confirming their suspicions. Tony Stark was a great man, but in the end his mind got the best of him. And he crumbles, inside their minds and out.
Selvig tries to talk to him about the wormhole, once, and Tony snaps, “shut the fuck up,” before he can even consider being polite about it, to which Selvig, icy, responds, “You’re not the only person who’s been through trauma, Stark.” He hasn’t been around the compound ever since; Tony tries not to think about it. He tries not to think about a lot.
Because he knows, is the thing. He knows they’ve all got it worse than him. Rhodey’s probably never going to regain feeling below the waist; he never found out why Fury’s got that eyepatch but he’s guessing it’s not a fun story; Maria keeps suspiciously tight-lipped about her time in the army before SHIELD snapped her up; Helen and Selvig both know too intimately the feeling of being brainwashed, out of control. The only inhabitant of the facility not on the knife-edge of psychological collapse, he thinks, is Vision—and only because it shouldn’t, scientifically speaking, be possible for him to have a breakdown.
Perspective: he’s not the only one with a past. Better to keep it to himself, choke down the nausea when someone mentions the wormhole, Loki, the specter, New York, the Chitauri. Try not to have a panic attack while watching Interstellar, because that would be ridiculous. That would be desperate for attention. Narcissistic.