DARKNESS
It's the darkness. The darkness that eats him up inside. Consumes him. Darkness. Afghanistan, Hammer, New York, Killian, Sokovia, Ultron, the Civil War and just the darkness. The deaths.
And he hates it.
The continuous onslaught of memories, furious and banging on the walls of his mind. He can't stop them. No matter how hard he tries, no matter what he does he can't undo those memories, so he hides them instead. He has a mask. Well, everyone really does, he supposes, but his is flawless, polished up by arrogance and alchohol to the point that there isn't a single crack. It's perfect. He is perfect, they think.
If only.
No-one ever sees his true self, maybe Pepper did, maybe Rhodey did, hell, maybe even the team did, but that was before. There's no team. Not anymore. He's a different man now, he's changed again. No-one knows who he truly is, the amount of pain hiding behind those sick eyes.
Sometimes he wishes Iron Man never happened, that he'd just died in that god forsaken cave with Yinsen. It was better before all that, when he was just a selfish, arrogant billionaire, no care in the world. At least he was happy.
But Tony Stark doesn't deserve fucking happiness.
No matter how much good he does, it can never overcome the bad he's done. Just by being alive he has made lives more miserable. And the guilt, of knowing this is all his fault, no matter what they tell him. He was attacked by his own weapons. It was only after that, that he got it into his thick skull what he'd been doing all these years. He was killing people while telling the world (and himself) he was saving them.
And then there was New York. Aliens, Other Dimensions, fucking gods, it all hit him in the face that really, he knows nothing. Seeing the vast, cold, emptiness of space itself had scared him in a way he didn't think possible.
And then the time he tries to do the right thing, to protect people, to make right all the wrongs he's done, thousands die. A whole city is destroyed. And it's all his fault. It was a mistake, they said. It's not your fault, they said. You didn't mean for this to happen, they said. But in the end, it was him.
The next time he tries to do the right thing, the team is ripped apart. It was inevitable. Bruce said it himself, they're a time bomb. But if it weren't for him, they'd all be together. They'd be happy.
But he fucked up. Again.
Maybe he should just quit trying to do the right thing.
Howard was right.
Steve was right.
They're all right.
He's no hero.
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- KiTTzu