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The feeling is achingly familiar when it washes over Tony.
Just like every other time, it catches him unguarded. It’s ten in the morning, and Tony is humming to himself while he slips two pieces of whole wheat bread (Pepper insists that it’s healthier, even if it tastes like dirt) into the toaster. Pepper is away in London for a conference until next week, leaving him alone in the penthouse.
And everything is fine until it’s not. That’s always how it works, isn’t it? He wakes up feeling great, expecting to spend his morning and afternoon in the lab until the kid gets here after school for their lab session, but it falls apart while he’s locked in a staring contest with the world’s slowest toaster.
It starts with something tightening in his chest. Tony huffs out a little breath and rubs his sternum with his knuckle, which is a trick that he’s seen Bruce do just about a million times over the years.
It doesn’t work.
The feeling only tightens further in response, like a belt wrapping around his lungs and constricting his airways until he’s gasping, begging for release-
No. Please, not today. Please. Just let me rest.
When the now-burnt bread pops out of the toaster loudly, Tony flinches bodily and recoils, something deep and awful inside of his splintering soul expecting a blow. He suddenly feels everything; the polished marble under his feet, the fabric of his sweatpants making his lower back itch, his own fear humming under his skin (just like the arc reactor used to).
Tony is angry, more than anything else. He’s angry that he’s forty-seven years old and he’s still too weak to fight his own mind. He’s angry that his anxiety has to ruin everything, has to ruin good days and bad days and days when Tony just wants to enjoy his life without always waiting for the axe to fall.
With much more force than necessary, Tony rips the plug to the toaster out of the wall and stomps off, intent on locking himself away until the too-hot feeling in his chest cools and disappears.
-
Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it, ignore it, ignore it, ignore it- your ribs cracked under the weight of the shield- don't think about that, just leave it alone- Rhodey trusted you to save him and you let him fall- ignore that-
Tony scrubs his hands down his face roughly, inhaling sharply. Any hopes of distracting himself via working in the lab have disintegrated, keeping him bound to the couch he keeps against the back wall for this specific reason, resisting every urge within him to take the elevator back upstairs for the liquor cabinet.
He’s awful, he’s awful, everyone around him dies, he’s like a bad omen, like a raven circling overhead or a black cat sleeping under a ladder-
All the lights are off. The darkness is supposed to help him relax, to trick his body into thinking that he’s safe, but it’s not working. There’s still a thunderstorm raging above his head, in the only spot he can’t reach. Tony has fixed things his whole life, has never known a challenge that can’t be solved with his mind and hands.
If Howard were here, he would scoff. Tony shivers when he thinks of what his father would do if the words mental illness were uttered in front of him, regarding the son that is supposed to be perfect. Stark men are made of iron, not glass or porcelain or velvet. Tony doesn’t think that he’s delicate enough to be porcelain, but his mind is as easily shattered as a heart.
Tony shakes his head harshly at the spiral, using the last of his effort to push himself from the cushions. If he ignores it, if he pretends everything bad isn’t there and his mind is just as pristine as it was fifteen years ago, then maybe he can push passed this. He can be the hero that the world expects Iron Man to be, in and out of the suit.
No. It doesn’t work. It never works. He’s falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, into the inescapable memories of Howard’s whiskey-breath and Yinsen’s dead eyes and the wormhole and Steve’s vengeful face drifting above his as he raises the shield in triumph, finally the perfect soldier that Howard always wanted and that Tony never could be-
There are hands on him suddenly. It’s Steve with the shield poised to kill, Obadiah with the smirk of a champion, Howard with his meaty fists and hurled words.
And Tony shatters.
He hurls his fists in the direction of the hands, feeling his knuckles connect with solid flesh; a cheekbone, he realizes. He throws his weight onto the source of his nightmares, because Jesus Christ, he will not be a victim again. He’s Tony Stark, Iron Man, the world’s most capable protecter, and he will not bow down to shadows and PTSD.
Tony is on top of them now, pinning them to the ground by their wrists, when the first trace of noise besides his own blood rushing through his veins, reaches his ears.
“Mr. Stark, please-”
Tony knows that voice.
His vision returns first, swimming dangerously before he blinks back into focus. The world is nothing more than black pinpricks at first, turning his sight into television static, but it clears just as he realizes that the wrists his pinning to the immaculate floor are startlingly thin.
Peter Parker stares back at him, expression contorted in fear as he’s pinned to the ground. His cheekbone is a deep red from where Tony’s knuckles connected with his face.
The world stops spinning. For a fraction of a second, they stay frozen like that, like a contemporary human art piece just waiting to be gawked at by onlookers who only pretend to understand.
A gasp is ripped from Tony’s throat involuntarily, burning the fine edges of his windpipe as he throws himself off of the kid like he’s a grenade. There are small explosions going off in his brain as it struggles to process the horror swirling around in his gut. “Fuck, Peter-”
Peter rolls off of his back with Tony’s weight (the weight that was pinning him to the ground like a fucking wild animal) off him and sits up, eyes wide. His cheek is already bruising, turning a sickening shade of black-purple that makes the man’s stomach lurch.
“Oh God.” Tony moans, body burning. It feels like he’s on fire, like he’s scrambling away, desperately, from the embers. He feels sick. He’s going to be sick. “Peter. Peter.”
“Mr. Stark-” The fifteen-year-old tries shakily, but Tony cuts him off.
“No. No.” He shakes his head harshly, heart thrumming against his ribs painfully. It’s impossible to tear his eyes away from the bruise that his hands caused. Peter’s eyes are glazed with tears, lower lip trembling. He breathes in thick horror, “I hurt you.”
“I’m okay.” Peter assures frantically, even though he’s bruised and crying and five feet away from the man who just attacked him.
“No. You could’ve- why didn’t you-” The kid’s strength is far beyond human comprehension. Tony never should have been able to even land a blow. His precognition should have saved him before he even stepped a foot in the lab, should have warned him of the unstable man within.
The kid seems to understand the unasked question, calming slightly. A tear slips down his cheek, his bruised cheek. “I didn’t- I couldn’t hurt you. It was- it was just an accident, right?”
“I still hurt you.” Tony doesn’t realize that he’s crying until the words come out as a sob. “I still- Jesus Christ. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-”
The kid reaches forward suddenly, still firmly planted to the ground, but Tony recoils in self-hatred. He doesn’t deserve an ounce of Peter Parker’s comfort, not after punching him in the face and pinning him to the ground for God-only-knows how long.
Tony is terrified of himself, terrified of what he’s capable of, even without the Iron Man suit.
“Get away- don't-” The billionaire stutters uselessly, standing and putting as much distance between him and the teenager he just traumatized as he can. Peter stands too, on shaky feet. He swipes his wrist over his cheeks to catch his tears.
For a long moment, it’s utterly silent. Tony is hit with the horrible realization that the kid that he’s come to love like his own flesh in blood is no longer safe here, and maybe he never was. He thinks of all the nights that Peter has passed out on his shoulder while watching a movie. Tony promised himself, in those quiet, intimate moments, that he would keep the kid safe, that he would never let anyone hurt him for as long as he lived.
He never thought that he would have to protect Peter from himself.
“You need to leave, kid.” Tony says lowly, voice breaking involuntarily.
If it’s even possible, the fifteen-year-old’s face crumples further. “No, no, Mr. Stark, it was just an accident. It’s not your fault.”
Tony shakes his head harshly. “You can’t be here, Peter. You have to- I could hurt you. I did hurt you. You have to leave. I’m serious.”
Peter chews on his lower lip, expression flickering into something resembling determination. Tony can’t comprehend why Peter isn’t running for the hills in terror, from the monster disguised as his mentor. “We can- can we just talk about this, please? I don’t blame you, Mr. Stark-”
And it’s that, Peter saying that he doesn’t blame him for the most unforgiveable sin Tony has ever committed, that does it.
“Get out !” Tony slams his hand (the same hand that marked Peter’s face) on the nearest surface, which happens to be his workbench. The kid flinches, eyes brimming with unshed tears. The billionaire wants to throw up.
When the kid stays quiet, Tony hears his own unsteady breathing, barely able to keep anything resembling a pattern as he struggles to not fall into another panic attack. His left hand is shaking so bad that he grabs his wrist and squeezes until he’s sure that it will leave a bruise. Good. Tony deserves it.
Slowly, quietly, Peter reaches for his backpack, which must have fallen off in the midst of the chaos. He slings it over his shoulders, hands visibly trembling, then lets out one quiet sob before turning away and hurrying out of the lab.
The silence that follows is the most sickening thing that Tony has ever heard.
-
Peter calls him seven times in the next twelve hours. Tony doesn’t answer.
He checks with FRIDAY each time to make sure that it’s not Spider-Man related, that the kid isn’t bleeding out in an alleyway somewhere because this is the perfect excuse to use Spider-Man as a distraction, but she assures him every time that his StarkWatch places him at his apartment, unharmed (aside from the already-healing bruise on his cheek that Tony created with his bare fists).
Pepper calls him once. He doesn’t pick up for her, either. He ignores it because he knows that she’ll notice something is wrong and he doesn’t think that he’ll be able to say it without spiraling into a full-blown mental breakdown.
Tony doesn’t even have the right to be this upset. Peter was the one who was attacked, who was hurt by the man who is supposed to protect him with his entire being, and here that same man is, hosting a pity-party for himself in his massive penthouse while Peter is alone in his rundown apartment.
It’s four in the morning when his phone rings with the eighth call. Tony stares at the lit-up screen, vision blurry with unshed tears.
-
Pepper comes home almost exactly twenty-four hours after The Incident (he’s taken to calling that, in the privacy of his own mind, because it means he doesn’t have to think about the details).
“Tony, honey?” Her voice echoes through the otherwise silent lab. Tony has spent the day down here again, not allowing himself to touch any of his projects as punishment. He stares at the spot where he pushed the kid to the ground for long enough that he can hear it. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” The billionaire says tensely, hand clenching and relaxing repeatedly over the fabric of his sweatpants. He craves whiskey like a dying man craves redemption, but he stopped drinking for Peter’s sake a long time ago, even if the kid won’t be around to see it anymore.
“You’ve been dodging my calls.” Pepper steps forward, blocking his view of That Spot. “What’s going on? Are you having anxiety?”
Tony grits his teeth until they hurt. He’s a fucking mess, one panic attack away from being admitted, and yet he still has too much pride to let his fiancé talk about the thunderstorm going on inside his mind. He sucks in a big breath, eyes burning. “The kid isn’t coming around anymore.”
“What? Why?” Pepper as cooed at him for months about his relationship with Peter, how the kid makes him gentle in a way that was previously impossible. He’s disappointed both of them, he realizes. “What happened?”
Tony digs his nails into his own wrist until it stings. He draws another shaky breath, swiping a hand over his eyes before any tears can fall. Slowly, with a trembling voice and a gaze stuck on the floor, he explains the worst thing he’s ever done.
“Honey...” Pepper says carefully. “That’s not your fault.”
“Pepper.” He growls.
Pepper shakes her head firmly, fingers brushing his knee. “You said that Peter wasn’t even upset with you. He understands. He knows that you would never actually hurt him.”
He rips his leg away from her. “I did actually hurt him. I bruised him. He’s just too fucking naïve to see anything different.”
“You didn’t hurt him on purpose-”
“That doesn’t make a difference, Pepper!”
They both pause. Tony’s chest is heaving, entire body shaking with the force of his self-loathing. He wishes that he died in that wormhole, before Peter ever had a chance to realize that his childhood hero is a monster.
Tony whispers, “He deserves so much better than me.”
“You love him.” Pepper counters tentatively, like Tony is a wild animal that could retreat at any moment. That’s certainly what he feels like.
“I don’t deserve to love him.”
-
“Boss,” FRIDAY interrupts Tony’s wallowing, which today, involves not getting out of bed. “Mr. Parker is entering the lobby.”
Tony shoots up into a sitting position, a cold chill settling in the base of his spine. He grips the sheets with sweaty palms before releasing them begrudgingly. The kid started leaving him voicemails after each failed call attempt, but Tony hasn’t allowed himself to listen to them. He’s scared that he’ll shatter if he hears Peter’s voice. “Why?”
“I believe today is Mr. Parker’s internship day.” FRIDAY replies simply. “He is boarding the elevator now and is on his way up.”
“Lock the door.” Tony commands, breathless. He scrubs his hands down his face roughly. The door clicks quietly. His breath is already getting shorter, more frantic. Peter can’t be here; he needs to be somewhere safe, away from Tony. “I can’t- I need- what do I...”
Peter’s footsteps are getting closer to the door. Tony snatches his phone up from the nightstand and rapidly dials the kid’s number, pressing a hand over his eyes to quell the stream of tears threatening to fall.
The teenager answers before it even gets through the first ring. “Hello?” Peter’s voice is a mixture of eagerness and anxiety that Tony caused.
“You have to leave, Peter.” Tony tries to keep his voice even, but it still shakes like a pole on a windy day.
He’s silent for a second before responding in the most heartbreaking of whispers, pulled from the depths of his soul, “But it’s- it’s lab day.”
Tony muffles a sob into his fist. “We can’t do lab day anymore, kid. We can’t- there’s no internship anymore. I’m sorry.”
“Mr. Stark...” Peter sniffs uncomprehendingly, painfully childlike. Tony wishes that Peter would realize that he’s doing this for him, not to cause him anymore pain. He needs to keep his innocence, an impossible task if he has to constantly worry about when his father-figure is going to snap and punch him in the face again, unprovoked. “Is this about what hap-happened? I don’t- I’m not mad at you, sir, I swear. The bruise is already gone, and I talked to May and she understands-”
“Your aunt understands what, kid?” It comes out harsher than he means it. “That I hit her nephew?”
“You didn’t mean to.” Peter is crying openly into the phone now, with these hitching newborn sobs that make Tony want to throw himself out the nearest window. “It’s not... it wasn’t you. And you didn’t know that it was me.”
Tony closes his eyes, the weight of the world suddenly too heavy on his shoulders. When he manages to speak without crying, it’s a mere, ashamed whisper. “I’m sorry, Peter.”
The kid leaves. Tony throws his phone to the floor and watches it crack against the polished hardwood, just like his heart.
-
“I’ve never seen you like this before.” Pepper says to him while they eat dinner, seven days after The Incident. It’s the longest he’s gone without seeing the kid in person since the internship became official. The world is out of it’s orbit without him.
Tony hardly has an appetite for chicken and rice. “I’ve never felt like this before.” He mumbles quietly, gaze stuck to the table.
When Pepper reaches over to grab his hand in comfort, he pulls away, knowing he doesn’t deserve an ounce of anything good.
-
The first time Howard hit Tony, he was twelve years old.
Under the careful guidance of the older boys at his stuffy private school in Boston, he accidentally caused a small, chemical explosion in the lab. They wanted to expel him, but Howard had dished out enough money that he managed to get off with only a five-day suspension on probation for the rest of the semester.
Howard’s fist cracked against Tony’s face when the twelve-year-old tried to defend himself from the ensuing screaming match. They had both paused, frozen in the longest moment in Tony Stark’s life as Howard stood there with his hand still balled up into a fist.
His reward for not telling Maria was getting to work alongside his father in his private lab for an hour the next day. Jarvis and Maria both asked about the small, round bruise over his cheekbone, just under his youthful eye. He lied and said it happened during the explosion.
Twelve-year-old Tony had no idea that the round, yellow bruise under his eye had the power to destroy his father’s life. Looking back, even if he did know, he still would not have said anything. Even when Howard insisted he was the most difficult, immature, spoiled, idiotic child this world has ever seen, no one could deny that he was obedient to a fault.
The bruise that Tony’s knuckles left on Peter’s face was not a result of an angry outburst, or a punishment for a stupid mistake, yet the mark was still left. Whether he meant to or not, whether he would ever willingly hurt Peter or not, his fist still connected with the kid’s cheek. He’s still no better than Howard.
Trauma is generational, a lesson that the billionaire learned when he first entered May Parker’s shoebox apartment, eight months ago, and felt an unexplainable yet all-consuming urge to hold Peter Parker in withered arms and never let go.
Even if Tony spent the next three decades of his life in therapy, working through every little childhood memory that has turned him into the hot fucking mess that he is today, he can’t change any of it. That trauma has already bled into Peter’s life irreparably.
It’s a never-ending cycle. From Edward Stark, to Howard, to Tony, and now, to Peter. Peter, who doesn’t even bear the Stark name but still has to bear the scars that come with it.
-
It takes thirteen days, almost two full weeks of locking himself away from his favorite person in the world, for something to finally give.
FRIDAY calls to him while he’s knee-deep in wires from the Iron Man suit. He’s taken apart an entire chest plate and started to rebuild it from memory, just as a distraction. “As per The Training Wheels Protocol, Spider-Man's A.I. has just alerted me to say that Mr. Parker appears to be injured.”
Tony is calling a suit before he can even think twice. The thought of seeing the kid in person makes his throat close up, but the thought of something awful happening because Tony is too much of a coward to face him is worse.
“Read me his workup.” Tony commands, blasting off of the party deck and towards Queens. FRIDAY automatically pulls up a map with Spider-Man's location, showing that he’s just a few blocks away from his own apartment.
“Mr. Parker has a three-inch laceration on his upper left thigh, likely caused by a blade, and is currently experiencing elevated adrenaline.”
“No shit.” Tony grumbles. “I’m experiencing elevated adrenaline and I’m not the one who was stabbed in the fucking leg.”
“Mr. Parker’s emotional distress is only in the minimal-to-mild level.”
Tony sighs heavily, anxiety humming under his skin like a constant white noise.
He arrives at Peter’s location quickly. There’s light rain above New York, making a little tapping sound as it bounces off of the suit. Peter is sitting down behind a dumpster, injured leg sprawled out in front of him and the other one tucked in tight. The mask is discarded next to him, crumpled on the dirty ground. Through the blue material over his thighs, the sluggish trail of blood over his legs is startlingly visible.
Despite the blood and the pain he surely must be in, Peter’s face lights up when he sees him. A neglected dog finally being rewarded with his owner’s attention.
“Hey,” Peter breathes, still smiling. “You came.”
Tony lets the mask fall away. He allows his eyes to roam around the kid’s face for a long moment, lingering on the spot where the bruise is now completely healed. All that’s left is pale, lightly freckled cheekbones.
“We need to get you to the MedBay.” Tony says tensely, ignoring his own watering eyes. He just needs to stick around long enough for Cho to stitch the kid up, apologize a few more times for good measure, and then retreat back to the lab while May comes to pick her nephew up.
Peter shakes his head. “It’ll heal on it’s own; it wasn’t deep.”
“It still needs to be stitched up.” Tony counters, balling his hands into fists to keep from touching the kid at all. “It could get infected, if we don’t.”
“Can we talk about this, then?” The teen perks up, eyes hopeful.
“There’s nothing to talk about.” The billionaire orders FRIDAY to tell May Parker what’s going on, so they can arrange for Peter to make it back to the apartment, when they’re done in the MedBay.
Once upon a time, after getting the kid stitched up, he would have spent the night at the tower without a second thought. Tony would always lay down with him for a while, then end up staying the whole night when the kid pulled those big, puppy-dog eyes on him and asked him to stay. He’s like a walking sleeping pill, the only reason that Tony’s sleeping schedule has resembled something akin to normal for the first time in decades.
Peter doesn’t look too happy with that answer, face slipping into a scowl. Finally, he’s angry, like Tony deserves. “Mr. Stark-”
“We’re not talking about it, kid.” Tony says firmly, bile rising in his throat. “I’m sorry.”
“I get a say in this too!” Peter shouts- shouts at him. He’s angrier about being cut out of Tony’s life for his own protection than being attacked in the first place. The universe has never deserved Peter Parker, and never will. “You punched me in the face and now you won’t even let me near you.”
The wind is knocked from Tony’s sails. Just like that first second that he realized that it was his kid that he had pinned to the floor, time stops as they just stare at each other.
With great pain, the older man manages a quiet, “Stiches first.”
Peter nods, expression flickering back to tentative hope. “Okay.”
-
After Cho finishes with the stitches, and a too-relaxed May calls to say that she’s working late and can only pick Peter up after midnight, Tony and Peter are locked into another staring contest from across his designated bed in the MedBay.
After five minutes, Peter breaks first. “I don’t blame you, sir.”
Tony sniffs, shifting to sit on the end of the kid’s bed. He’s still scared to get too close, to allow himself to get swept up by the urge to wrap his arms around Peter and whisper apologies until his vocal cords break. “You don’t always have to be so selfless all the time, you know. You’re allowed to be as mad as you want.”
“I’m not mad, though.”
The billionaire grips his own wrist to quell the shaking. He’s already said it, but the words are on the tip of his tongue before he can think better of it. His voice shakes. “I’m... I’m sorry, Peter, for everything. I... I told myself a long time ago that I wasn’t going to hurt you and... I fucked up.”
“You didn’t know it was me.” Peter argues softly, wise beyond his years yet still so, so young. “I know that- that you would never hurt me on purpose.”
Tony is hit with the urge to cry. When he speaks, it comes out in a half-sob, pulled from the depths of his stomach. “I’m fucked up, kid. I’m a fucking mess. You don’t need that. You deserve better.”
Peter goes quiet. Tony can practically see the cogs turning in his brain, the thoughts bouncing off the sides of his skull like stray bullets. Tony calls him a kid-genius for a reason, he understands things about the world in a way that the billionaire could only dream of.
“You... you have PTSD, right?”
Tony blinks in surprise, letting a wooden smile pull on his lips. “Why, is it that obvious?”
Peter huffs. “No, no- I mean, kind of? I just... my Uncle Ben had it too. That’s why I... I know what you did isn’t your fault. It wasn’t his, either.”
Now that makes him tense in anticipation. Peter seldom mentions his late uncle, who was killed six months before he recruited Spider-Man. Tony only knows vague, half-details that were whispered to him by a small, crying voice. He knows that it happened after Peter and Ben got into an argument. He knows that Ben pushed Peter out of the way and took the bullet for him. He knows that fourteen-year-old Peter Parker desperately tried to block the wound as he screamed for help to an uncaring world.
After a long moment of contemplation, the teenager shakily continues, eyes burning holes into the bedsheets, “When I was... ten, maybe eleven, there was this- this case that Ben was working and- and something went wrong. Two of his cop buddies ended up being killed right in front of him. Uncle Ben... Ben had to take a few months off of work because... because... he was just different, you know?”
Tony makes a vague, wordless noise of understanding.
“There was this one time where- where I came home from school early and Ben... Ben tried to hit me with a baseball bat.”
His stomach drops. “Kid...”
Peter glances up at him. “Not on purpose. He didn’t know it was me, just like you. I ducked and it hit the table instead. When I sat back up and Ben realized it was me... it looked like he was going to throw up.”
The kid starts to cry. Not a lot, just in little hitching breaths and subdued sobs. Despite the panic that rises in Tony’s lungs, he reaches for the kid’s hand in comfort. Peter squeezes it. Tony struggles to understand how his hands, the same hands that can pin an innocent kid to the ground in a haze of terror, can be this gentle.
“I’m sorry.” Tony whispers, even though he’s not completely sure what he’s apologizing for anymore. Peter’s lips twitch into a shaky smile before it disappears as he wipes the tears from his pale cheeks, sniffling.
He finally understands why Peter is too good to blame him, why he sees the best in the most broken people. Part of him is heartbroken that the kid has had to go through this twice, but he knows that Peter is strong beyond comprehension.
Tony blows out a big breath. He’s not sure why he’s suddenly hit with the strong urge to explain himself, to explain the reaction that nearly severed their relationship forever, but he doesn’t think too hard about it before he’s speaking.
“My dad...” He starts unsurely, clearing his throat before plunging forward. “My father used to hit me, when I was your age. That’s why...” He gestures, vaguely, to the space between him and the kid.
Of course, kind, empathetic, perfect Peter Parker gets visibly misty-eyed hearing about something that happened years before he was even born. After a brief silence, he lunges forward in an embrace, head firmly buried in the older man’s chest. Tony hugs him back, one shaking hand tangled in his wild curls.
“I’m sorry that your dad was the worst.” He says, and Tony laughs. Really, genuinely laughs.
“I’m sorry that I’ve been ignoring you.” Tony sniffs once, banishing the last of his vulnerability, for tonight. “This time I’m the one who really screwed the pooch.”
“You took it to the free clinic, though.”
“That I did.”
In the lull that follows, Tony allows himself to take his first full breath in nearly two weeks. He pushes away the unwanted, lingering guilt of waiting so long to have this conversation out of his own fear. None of the matters, right now. He knows that he’ll feel guilty about what he did for the rest of his life, but that guilt no longer has to consume him.
“Can I have the internship back now?” Peter asks after they pull away. “I’ve had nothing to do besides Spider-Man and school for two weeks. It’s getting boring.”
“Yeah.” Tony sighs happily, knowing that the world has finally started spinning again. “I’ve been getting pretty lonely in the lab without my little buddy.”