Chapter Text
Dear Diary,
If people are born with the ability to love, why aren't they born with the ability to be loved?
Why does loving come so naturally when nobody freely offers love?
Dear Diary,
I think not everyone is born with the ability to love like you do. You're a very special person.
Contrary to what people tend to think, Tony Stark is terrible at writing. Talking, he's got game. He can talk his way out of the most difficult situations. Give him a pen and a sheet of paper, though, and suddenly he blanks out. Tony knows this himself - he has failed many, many literature essays back in the good old days - so he blinks down at the small, tattered journal in his hand. He fully intends to throw it away. It's useless, Doctor Strange said. The other half is lost somewhere in the vast time and space. No one bothered to track it down.
"The other half?"
"This is a two-part journal. One of the earliest forms of transcription magic. Whatever you write in this journal will disappear and ony be visible in the other journal connected to this one. Only, that half was lost in time. Literally. We do not know when, much less where, it is. So this has been rendered useless. Do me a favor and discard it, if you will."
Strange left it at that, leaving the table suddenly as he muttered something about the connections being too primitive to track.
So that is how Tony Stark is left with a journal, an actual, old-fashioned journal, in his hands. Tony absentmindedly flips through it and almost laughs out loud. Everything but the first page is empty, and there are only two words scribbled down on the first page. Dear Diary, it reads. Tony is amused despite himself. He has not touched a diary since when he was nine, when Howard found his secret diary and read all about his first crush. Furiously blinking back teras against the onslaught of cruel mockery by his own father, Tony swore to himself then and there to never write in a diary again. The resolution has not been broken since. Tony does not plan to break it now, either. It's just an impulse, fueled by curiosity, that has him flip to the second page of the diary. Tony tentatively picks up a pen. Like most pens in his workshop, there is no guarantee that it will work. Instead of writing coherent words, Tony draws a little star in the corner of the page. Sure enough, the star stays there for just a few seconds and disappears like it was never there. Tony snorts and puts his pen down. The diary lies forgotten in his workshop.
Only, Tony never forgets about it.
Time after time he thinks about the diary. Time after time he is filled with the urge to write in it. Tony is first surprised with himself, then frustrated, then exasperated. As usual, when he reaches this stage, he tries his best to shove every passing thought about the diary in a neat little cupboard in his mind and never look back. After a week of struggling and failing, Tony finally gives in to the urge and picks up the diary again. He does grab a pen, too, but that doesn't mean he knows what to write.
Funny, isn't it, Tony thinks to himself. All this time I've been wanting to write something in this diary, but I've never been thinking about what I'd write.
And thus Tony is forced to admit the true reason why he was attracted to the idea of filling out a diary after such a long time. It's not that he's finally heeding the advice of many of his therapists and attempting to keep a journal. It's not that he's always been aching to have a magical diary. It is because Tony is, to put it simply, terribly lonely.
He knows that he is privileged. Though he fell out with Pepper after the snap, he's still got friends. Teammates. After Thanos and the snap, the Avengers as a team came together once again. Not that they were emotionally mature and handled all the talking and processing necessary to overcome differences, but all of them were good at pretending nothing ever happened. Tentatively, Tony calls them his friends. Except they're not present, not like back then when they all lived together in the tower. Thor and Bruce are mostly away. Steve declined the offer to spend time with Peggy back in his age, but he's enjoying a quiet retirement in his corner of Brooklyn. Clint has settled down and now has a family of his own. Natasha is around more than she was before, but Nat hardly opens up herself. No one has come down to his new and improved workshop since the snap. Now, even if Tony spends days in the workshop without eating or drinking, there is no one to check in on him.
Tony shouldn't complain, though. They already did so much for him. They stuck around. Even after Tony became incapable of flying the suit, now too fragile to bear even mild physical exertion, they stuck around and kept treating Tony the same. Tony never wanted to be a burden, still doesn't want to be a burden, to the ones he cares about. He didn't want to be ungrateful. So he never said a thing, even as solitude began to take physical form and gnaw away at his very essence. Even as loneliness began to fill his heart to the brim with all the unshed tears.
It's been about two weeks since Tony felt a large puncture wound open up in his chest.
On good days, Tony thinks that he can bear it. It's not really there, the puncture wound. If he looks in the mirror his chest is intact, or as intact as it could be after all the maltreatment it's been through. But Tony can swear to God that he doesn't even believe that the puncture wound is real. For the first two days, he was sure of some magical tampering, of something making him think he was fine. Only after a few more days, he realized that the pain and hurt from loneliness alone has manifested in a physical pain that very, very closely resembles that of a puncture wound. It hurts almost as bad as Afghanistan, to the degree it leaves Tony wondering whether the pain he felt there was partly psychological, too. It feels as if a freezing gust of wind is blowing through his body and reaching his soul. It makes Tony perpetually cold. He now takes boiling hot showers and covers himself in thick blankets whenever possible.
On good days, though, Tony really thinks he can bear it. He puts on a thick turtleneck sweater and a cocky smile and pretends everything is okay. But even on good days, when he realizes he is alone, so, so alone, the frayed edge of the puncture wound aches a little more. The hole in his chest opens up a little wider. Tony swallows the pain with some ibuprofen, knowing that he can't tell anyone about this. Not only will it make his teammates - his friends - worry unnecessarily, but it'll also bring up doubts about his mental stability. Which will lead to his work with Stark tech being questioned and most likely rejected. That's the one thing that gets him going, nowadays. The one way he can still be of use to the world. Tony can't go on if he loses that, too.
Still, Tony is only human. More so than others. And so Tony finds himself staring at the blank second page of the diary, the paper slightly yellowed and wrinkled. Because the promise of release, of unloading his emotions, is so, so sweet. Then there's the possibility that someone will read it. They'll understand what Tony feels, how close Tony is to just giving up, and how much he is hurting. Someone will know. Someone in one of the many, many worlds and timelines will know.
Tony picks up a pen and begins writing.
Dear Diary,
I'm writing this in my workshop. I shouldn't be writing this. I shouldn't be in the workshop right now, either. I should be going over the backlogged pile of documents waiting to be approved. They're all boring, though. Some types of legal matters. I don't know why I have to go over them when I'm not even a lawyer.
It's been the same for as long as I can remember. I don't know if I want things to change, but I definitely don't want things to stay this way.
Tony stops writing and sighs. As expected, he is terrible at writing anything. Especially terrible at writing out his feelings. The gaping hole in his chest is still there, as icy cold as ever. Tony watches the last traces of ink disappear on the page, then puts his pen down.
This time, the diary does lie forgotten in his workshop for a week.
When Tony comes back to the workshop after a week of struggling with documents he can barely understand, though, Tony immediately notices something. The page he'd kept open is no longer blank. He hurries to the table with the diary and carefully picks it up. Without a doubt, there are words written on the once-clean paper. Upon closer examination, Tony realizes with shock that the words are actually in English. Tony immediately frowns. What are the odds, that the long-lost other half of this diary was found by someone who speaks English? And what are the odds of that person writing back? Something is off. Things are going too well, a rarity in Tony's life.
Tony still reads the words written in there. The handwriting is neat, if a little old-fashioned. It's oddly familiar.
Dear Diary,
I don't understand. I always lock all doors when I'm sick and in bed. How did you come in, and why did you do nothing but write in this diary?
And how did you get the words to stick? The letters are fading even as I'm writing this. It's like magic.
Tony's heart pounds. He picks up a pen and hastily begins writing in the diary.
Dear Diary,
You're not going to believe this, but I'm going to explain it as best as I can.
I didn't come into your house while you were sick and in bed. I have a diary just like yours. What I write here shows up in your diary, and vice versa.
What I write here disappears for me, too. Your words stick in mine.
A few moments after all of his writing fade away, a new passage appears on the next page. Tony reads it with wide eyes.
Dear Diary,
I don't understand, but I don't understand most of the new technology people are coming up with nowadays. All I understand is that you can read what I write in here and I can read what you write in here. It's basically like exchanging postcards then, right? Well, if so, since you shared a bit of your day, I feel as if I should share some of mine. I don't know what you do in your workshop, but I can promise you it'll be more fun than what I've been doing all day. I caught a nasty strain of the cold going around. I've been bedridden for a few days. I read all the books I have and used up all the sheets of paper I had for art yesterday, so I just stared out the window and gave all the passersby the strangest names in my head. Then I got so bored that I decided to try drawing in this diary again, and found what you wrote.
Doesn't this sound incredibly boring?
Honestly, legal documents sound incredibly boring, too. I don't know how lawyers do it. If you're not a lawyer I suggest getting a lawyer to do it for you. That's what they're for, right? If you have legal work to do you must be one of those well-off people. Come to think of it, is this diary yours? Should I give it back to you? It must be expensive, the modern technology that it is. If you leave your address I'll try and get it sent to your place as soon as possible. It might take some time though because I can't leave the house yet and I have to wait for my friend to go visit the postal office for me. Please let me know how I should proceed.
In the meantime, I'll be thinking of you. Maybe one of the passersby I saw today was you. Maybe someone I'll see tomorrow is you.
This feels strange to say to a diary, but take care.
Tony stares down at the lengthy entry. He stares especially at the last sentence.
I'll be thinking of you.
Take care.
Tony flinches away from the diary only when he realizes he is crying. He is really, really crying, the way he hasn't cried in over a decade. He hasn't cried like this even through his fall out with Pepper. Tony doesn't understand why those simple words make him cry, except he now feels less cold. It hurts still, but it's a different kind of hurt. The kind that soothes as much as it aches. Tony picks up the diary, careful not to get any tears on it, and thumbs the words gingerly. He knows that he should reply in kind, probably leave a heartfelt message about how much the kind words touched him, but he can't. He's only ever good at talking and not at writing. So instead, he picks up a pen and writes a short few words.
Dear Diary,
You take care, too.
The words feel so inept that Tony impulsively picks up the pen and scribbles again. P.S. What's your name? Tony writes, in an attempt to place a name on the person that said they'll be thinking of him. That asked him to take care. Soon, some words write themselves on the now nearly full page.
Dear Diary,
It's Steve Rogers.