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The problem is, Tony can still taste his guilt on his tongue. It's hidden under layers of blood and dust and bile, but there nonetheless, curling up and around the back of his throat like the very serpents that nearly tore the world apart.
And maybe it's just due penance for the whole SHRA business, or maybe it's just because Tony turning up to save the day with new and exciting gadgets is just something they take for granted, but the whole thing is an anticlimax.
That might be Tony's fault. He could have given the whole incident better punctuation when returning the shield to Steve. Steve's fingertips traced the scar in the metal, and said something about how he liked the scars, and that stopped Tony still from anything he might have said. It was a metaphor. Steve didn't want to forget the scars in their friendship. The uru-infused enhancement made it stronger, so maybe everything they'd been through should have made their friendship stronger -- but Steve wanted to keep the cracks visible.
He never wanted to forget that Tony had split through the Avengers' trust like a lightning bolt. He wanted to have it face forward, distinctive and present in every fight for justice. We were broken, but we were rebuilt stronger.
But never forget who broke us and how.
Tony knows that self-loathing voice. It's the voice that came, out there on the battlefield streets, when Tony moved away from the action and gave up the only good thing he had left about himself, sacrificed it to Odin in return for the chance to save the world.
He had one thing left, and he sacrificed it for them, and they don't even know what he's done. How far he would actually go for them.
Tony sinks down onto his bed, numb. It's an anti-climax, for sure. And maybe Tony once-of-a-time would have told Steve, would have asked for help through it, and maybe Steve once-of-a-time wouldn't have been able to help, but the reassuring pat on the shoulder and the reassuring words in Steve's arsenal might have provided a moment of calm, might have been all the proof Tony needed to know he could get through this.
But it wasn't something he was sure he had the right for, not any more. Sure, they'd hugged and made up in front of the others -- more than a year ago, now -- but nothing was the same. Tony thought maybe they were getting there, getting back to the same push-and-pull relationship they'd always had, but this...
This just enforced that things between them were still marred by a scar.
This just enforced that at the end of the day, the others didn't give a damn what Tony gave up to keep them safe.
He gave them everything, and no one had noticed a single damn thing.
Because Odin, he just lets you into his magical lab for nothing, Tony thinks, in that same self-loathing voice.
He knows that voice.
It is the voice that had rejoiced in his method of falling from grace.
Tony's home isn't amongst the Avengers. Not like it once was. He still can't regret it as much as the others want him to, because even though his mind is blank of the events that led to his apparently dubious and terrible acts of the civil war, he knows himself. If there had been a real choice, that wasn't fire and frying pans and rocks and hard places, Tony would have taken it. He's been piecing parts of it together, inbetween the silence and the dark, and Osborn's actions would have been worse if he'd been allowed free reign from the beginning of the superhero registration, Tony's sure of it.
He's sure of it, but he doesn't really have anyone to share something like that with. He doesn't have anywhere to go. Steve will be grieving Bucky again, Natasha moreso, and who knew where the rest were?
One voice, that terrible voice, tells him he's already made the step back into alcoholism, so why not stay and enjoy the ride. The other voice, the rest of him, had been the voice that sacrificed Tony's sobriety for the greater good, and that voice didn't have any good suggestions at all, except for no, giving it up once was bad enough.
Other people would cry to a god for help, but Tony is in this position because of that. There is no one to help. It's a roadblock in his brain, and he can still taste the alcohol on the back of his throat. It tastes of guilt and freedom and doesn't help his mental stalemate either way.
Paris is still frozen, and Tony empathises.
Wait, I’m wrong
Should have done better than this
Please, I’ll be strong
I’m finding it hard to resist
So show me what I’m looking for
Save me, I’m lost