Warnings: language, some gore.
Infinite gratitude to my beta, irite, without whom just about everything I write would be tossed in the "too weird to publish" pile.
I do not own The Avengers.
For four nights straight, Tony did not sleep.
The first two nights, he hardly noticed. He was accustomed to staying awake for extended periods, and while 48 hours was pushing it, it was still within the boundaries of "normal."
By the third morning, he noticed. He dragged himself from bed and into the bathroom, hardly able to tell if he was actually conscious or if he had somehow mastered the art of sleep-showering. When he slouched into the early morning Avengers meeting, looking bleary-eyed and sucking down a cup of straight espresso, everyone shot him sympathetic looks. Even Fury didn't have anything snotty to say to him about being half an hour late. That was unprecedented, but Tony was so grateful that he didn't say anything, lest Fury's clemency end. Not to mention the fact that Tony was in no state to think of any appropriately smarmy replies.
The day passed in a blur of sounds and colors that his overtaxed brain could not process beyond registering that it was, in fact, receiving sensory input.
That night, as he laid in bed next to Pepper's still form, he stared up at the moon and waited for sleep to take him.
It didn't.
Instead, he tossed and turned and found himself growing more angry and resentful as the night faded into dawn. The numbers on the clock next to his bed counted incessantly upwards, and by the time they finally reached 6:00, it was actually a relief. He didn't have to watch it anymore.
So on the fourth morning, he literally stumbled into the kitchen and claimed a whole pot of coffee as his own. He carried it—still in the pot—down to his lab, where he mostly sat in his desk chair and stared unseeing at the screens surrounding him for eight hours.
At 5:00, he conceded defeat and called Pepper to see if she wanted to get dinner.
But Tony wasn't hungry, and so he picked listlessly at the (probably overpriced) steak dinner he'd ordered, mostly wishing it would disappear. Pepper made a valiant attempt at conversation, but it became apparent fairly quickly that all she was going to get out of him was monosyllables and blank stares, so, after forty-five minutes, she gave up. Once or twice, Tony registered her concerned looks, but she was Pepper and being concerned was part of her job description. Therefore, Tony dismissed it.
Before they left, she briefly took his hand in hers and said, "It's okay, Tony."
Which was a weird thing to say, but her hand was soft and he was too tired to think too hard about why she was reassuring him. He nodded as a response, and she gave him a tight, worried smile.
They went to bed early that night, so Tony was able to watch the numbers on the clock crawl up to 12:59 before starting over at 1:00.
Dazed, he spent the night watching the moon again, marveling at the way it seemed to both hang motionless in the sky and to fly across the night in what felt like a heartbeat. The incongruity overwhelmed him, and he closed his eyes against the sudden dizzying spinning of the cosmos.
But he did not sleep.
The fifth morning, time ground to a complete halt. It flowed around him, viscous and sticky, but it did not seem to touch him, instead leaving him in a frozen stupor. Tony sat at the table in the kitchen, watching the events of the morning unfold, but he couldn't find it in himself to move, to participate, to act.
So, he was still sitting at the table at lunchtime.
At which point someone called Pepper, and she gently took his hand, led him back to his bedroom, and helped him undress. He laid down, and she sat down on the bed next to him.
"When was the last time you slept?" she asked.
Tony marveled at the way her words swam through the air towards him. He reached up to touch one.
"Tony?"
Right. Focus. "What?"
"The last time you slept, Tony. When was it?"
He thought back. If he recalled correctly, as it was entirely possible that he didn't, "Four nights ago. When I had to get up in the middle of the night for that mission."
For some reason, his words caused Pepper to stiffen.
"What?" he asked again. "It's just a little insomnia, Pep..."
But she looked so fucking sad as she took his hand in hers again, and stroked her thumb over his knuckles. "It's okay, Tony. No one...it's going to be okay. Okay?"
Well, of course it was. He just needed to get some sleep. He expressed this to Pepper, who looked (if possible) more awfully tragic, but she set his hand down gently and stood. "Let me know if you need anything. Anything."
Tony laid in bed for almost two hours, but he did not sleep. At 2:00, he got out of bed and, forgetting the fact that he'd stripped down to just his boxers and a t-shirt, wandered down to his lab.
He tried to work, but the light coming off the computer screens was almost overwhelmingly bright and the sound of his rock'n'roll was almost overwhelmingly jarring, so he soon found himself sitting in silent darkness with his eyes closed, idly spinning his chair back and forth in a semi-circle.
Back...and forth...and back...and forth.
Bruce found him at 5:00. He stuck his head into the lab and called, "Dinner's ready. Steve made tacos." When he didn't get a reply, he entered the lab more fully. "Tony?"
But Tony didn't reply, just kept swinging his chair around, and Bruce had made it all the way to the billionaire and had taken his pulse before Tony even registered his presence.
"What're you doing?"
Bruce rested the back of his hand against Tony's forehead, checking for a fever. "Just making sure you haven't died. Are you okay?"
Tony jerked back from the physicist's touch. "'M fine. Just tired." He cracked his eyes open just in time to see the oddly intense, piercing look that Bruce was giving him. "What?"
"Have you slept at all since our last mission?"
Tony gave a half-shrug. "No."
Bruce shook his head, looking dismayed. "I don't know why you're doing this to yourself, it wasn't your fault—"
"Look, it's just a little insomnia, I'll be fine once I get some fucking sleep," Tony interrupted. "Which I can't do if you people won't leave me the hell alone."
"Just a little insomnia," Bruce repeated, disbelief apparent in his voice. "Tony, it's been four days—"
"Tell Steve I'm not hungry."
Recognizing the dismissal for what it was, Bruce shrugged. "Whatever, Tony. Just...get some rest. Okay?"
"Working on it, Banner."
Bruce shrugged again. "Sure, Tony."
The door swooshed shut behind him.
Alone again, Tony took a minute to reflect on whatever it was that Bruce had been rambling about. What hadn't been Tony's fault? He didn't know, and trying to think through the haze of fatigue was pretty much futile. In his condition, he couldn't even begin to imagine what Bruce had been going on about.
Something nagged at the back of Tony's mind, but the exhaustion that had seeped into every fiber of his being made it easy to ignore.
Deciding abruptly that he'd had enough of his lab for the day, he stood and wandered out towards the elevator.
He took it up to the top floor, then took the stairs to the roof, where he became immediately aware that he was, in fact, wearing only his underwear. Which was a little embarrassing. But the crisp autumn air was refreshing, and even though the gravel on the roof was digging painfully into his bare feet, he wandered over to the edge to look out over the city. After a few minutes of trying to get his eyes to focus long enough to enjoy the view, he gave up and nestled down in the corner, the hard concrete barrier solid and safe against his back. He shut his eyes.
Almost immediately, an image flashed in his mind. Someone falling. Screaming. A sickening crunch echoing through him, a crushing sense of dismay, failure, horror.
A hand on his shoulder.
Tony jerked out of his micro sleep.
Or, maybe it had been more than a micro sleep. Because twilight was settling over the city now, which meant that it had to be after 7:00.
Looking up, Tony made out the large and imposing shape of Steve Rogers, who immediately launched into team-leader slash mother-hen mode. "How long have you been up here, Tony? Geez, what's going on with you today?"
Tony used the concrete barrier to support himself as he dragged himself slowly to his feet. He muttered, "I fell asleep, that's all."
"On the roof. On a 50 degree day. In your underwear."
Tony had to admit the circumstances were a little unusual. Still, it was definitely not the strangest thing he'd ever done. "What's your point, Rogers?"
"Are you okay?"
Well, his back was killing him, and he had gravel embedded...everywhere, and his two hour nap hadn't really helped with the bone-numbing exhaustion, but that seemed irrelevant and so he replied with as much cheer as he could muster, "Just peachy, Cap."
It came out sounding far more 'manic' than 'cheery.'
Steve gave Tony an appraising look. He wasn't an idiot, and he could see that the billionaire was clearly not 'peachy.' The shadows under Tony's eyes looked like bruises, and he was pale and drawn, and for some reason dressed only in his undergarments. But Steve also knew that Tony was old enough to take care of himself, so he squashed his concerns and said, "Sure, Stark. Pepper's been looking for you since 6:00. I'll tell her I found you." He began to walk away, but turned and—unable to quell his worry entirely—added, "If you want to talk about what happened...well, I'm a pretty good listener. If you want to get it off your chest." With a sheepish shrug, he headed back to the stairs.
What the hell is he talking about? Tony wondered, baffled.
A vague image in the back of his mind.
(Falling, screaming, miscalculating, failing. You failed her)
Tony shook his head and the image dissipated as quickly as it had come. He followed in Steve's footsteps.
Back in his penthouse, he took a few moments to shake the gravel off and to put some real clothes on.
He didn't listen to any of the voicemails that Pepper had left him, though, and he didn't seek her out. She'd find her way up here or she wouldn't. At the moment, Tony didn't particularly care.
He was too tired to care.
Instead, he made his way over to the bar and poured himself a scotch of impressive proportions. He downed it in two swallows and poured himself a refill. He had decided, as he had made his way back downstairs, that he was done with the insomnia, was ready to sleep for about a year. And if this was the only way he was going to get some damn rest then, well, so be it.
His second drink went the same way as his first, as did numbers three, four, and five.
Tony took a break before drink number six, throwing himself onto one of the nearby couches and closing his eyes. He felt drowsy, and warm, and slowly he drifted down into an uneasy doze.
The battle had been going badly from the start. At least, Tony had thought so. He had stayed up too late again, had been drinking too much again, hadn't been prepared for the possibility of a mission at 4:00 on a Tuesday morning. He was off his game and he knew it, but he thought that a superhero having an off day was better than no superhero at all. So he'd suited up with the others, grumbling about how rude it was for terrorists to attack and take hostages so fucking early.
They engaged the terrorists on the ground, but couldn't find the hostages. As it turned out, they were being held in the scaffolding of an unfinished building, more than 300 feet in the air. Most of the terrorists had been easy enough to take care of, but negotiating with the remaining pair for the release of the hostages was harder.
Still, they had nearly gotten the problem cleared up, had gotten almost all of the hostages to safety. They had been gathered on the ground, coordinating with the police officers to free the last hostage, when in a final act of defiance one of the terrorists pushed the poor woman from the building.
Tony, of course, had blasted straight up to rescue her.
That should have been it, the happy ending, except Tony was off his game and he knew it. He was tired and half-drunk and he'd taken off too slowly but it still could have been okay except he made one tiny miscalculation and—
He caught her, oh yes, he caught her, but his momentum had been too great, or maybe it had been hers, and he caught her but she came apart in his arms and he was left holding pieces of a woman and not the whole thing and—
A hand on his shoulder.
Tony jerked awake, jerked away from the hand, jerked away from the comfort that now knew he did not fucking deserve. With a low moan, he rolled off the couch and onto his hands and knees, vomiting up a caustic mixture of scotch and stomach acid.
When he finished retching, someone was rubbing soothing circles on his back and he leaned into the touch as much he could, given that his mind was screaming at him that he had no fucking business accepting it.
He slowly became aware that someone was talking, babbling in fact, and oh God it was him but he couldn't stop.
"Holy shit, that happened. That actually fucking happened? Oh my God I wasn't thinking and she just fucking broke—"
Tony retched again, as he remembered the blood spraying across his face plate, the sound of her spine snapping in his arms.
"—And it was my own goddamn fault," he finished, as if he hadn't stopped, and the horror of it washed over him anew, and he lost all capability for thought, for coherence, for doing anything but falling backwards into the arms that were tugging him into an embrace.
And Pepper (because it was Pepper, of course it was, he didn't deserve her) waited as his ranting turned into sobbing, and the sobbing quieted into harsh gasps for air and then she carefully helped him to his feet and away from the mess on the floor. She guided him to his bedroom for the second time that day and laid him down on his side. Slipping her shoes off, she curled up behind him. She wrapped him in her arms and whispered, "I'm sorry, Tony."
He tried to pull away, but she held him tighter, and his weak efforts were futile. So he gave in and relaxed against her, asking, "What're you sorry for?"
Pepper sighed, her breath warm on the back of his neck. "I should have noticed sooner. The insomnia...I thought you were...coping. But you weren't."
"Don't be sorry, Pep. I didn't..." Tony let out a small, mirthless laugh, "I didn't know what everyone was talking about, when they kept asking me if I was okay, if I needed to talk...Christ, I just blocked it out completely, what the fuck is wrong with me? How fucking crazy am I?"
Tony felt her shake her head behind him. "You're not crazy. And you didn't block it out, not entirely. The insomnia, Tony."
"What do you mean?" he asked, but even as he said the words, it began to make a sick kind of sense.
"I think...you couldn't sleep, because part of you believed that sleeping...that it somehow led to that woman's death."
Normally, Tony didn't go in for psychoanalysis, but that insight rang too true to ignore. "It did, Pep. Well, that and the booze." He thought of the scotch he'd just been drinking, and felt sick all over again. "God, I'm such a fuck up—"
She cut him off. "Don't say that. You made a mistake, that's all."
He snorted, "Yeah, that's all—"
"That is all."
Tony rolled over to face her. "Pep—"
Pepper cut him off again, this time by pressing a kiss to his cheek. "Don't think about it," she said, pulling away. "It's in the past. Use it as a chance to learn, Tony, and do better next time."
It seemed too easy, too simple, too hard to swallow that a woman's life and senselessly violent end could be so easily transformed into just a fucking learning exercise. "I don't see how that's going to make up for anything."
"It's not," she said simply. "But what else can you do?"
Tony sighed. "It's not that easy, Pep." But somehow, her words were comforting, were something that he could swallow.
And if it didn't soothe him completely, it quieted the raging inferno that had erupted in his mind, that had been erupting in his mind for days, unnoticed and ignored as it ripped him apart.
They lapsed into silence, and after a few minutes, Tony felt his eyes drift shut.
Somehow, on that fifth night, he slept.
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