Chapter Text
“And that’s when my love was burning, yeah it’s still burning.”~ Ghost, Ella Henderson
Love isn’t supposed to hurt. Every time you woke up to an empty bed, you couldn’t help but sit up as this mantra repeated over and over and over again in your head. When Tony was there, beside you, it was perfect. But just as soon as things got better, they got equally worse just as fast. For the last year of your marriage, your husband slept in his lab during the majority of the week. He hadn’t been in the same bed with you for a month, and you were losing faith in his love. Tony is just extremely busy, you tried to reason. He is a superhero who saves the planet every few years, after all.
“We both know that’s a lie,” your conscious whispered to you. “We both know that this isn’t right.”
And with a sharp pain in your chest, you would throw off the covers and plunge yourself headfirst into your day. The wilting of your heart was easier to ignore if you were distracted. It took you a while to accept the inevitable: divorcing Tony Stark. You tried to reconnect with him, but he often was so far into his work or his “playtime” that all you received was a kiss on the forehead and a dismissal. It wasn’t until you couldn’t remember the last time you kissed him on the lips that you realized that that this wasn’t healthy. Collapsed on the bedroom floor, sobbing off your caked on makeup, you looked hard and long in the mirror and found this lost version of yourself. You were giving Tony everything you had to give, and he didn’t even notice. Here your love was burning to ashes in your chest… and he didn’t even care. An hour later you had your lawyer on the phone filing for irreconcilable differences. You were still desperately in love with him but you had to get away. It was eating you alive staying there. But watching him sign the divorce papers with his flourishing signature, with not a hint of regret, you wonder if he ever loved you at all. The last of your heart is engulfed in flames as your pen hits the dotted line, and crumbles to pieces as you pull it away. The ashes have been used as the ink to sign your name, and yet you’re still burning alive.