My laptop was stolen a few weeks ago with all of my old stories. I'm trying to recover as many of them as possible but it's a long frustrating process and I leave for my internship in two days. Where that leaves me with my reposts, well. I'll do what I can but that's the best I can offer right now.
If any of you have old copies of my stories please let me know.
This Robot Heart
big man in a suit of armor
take that away and what are you
{what are you?}
Merely human, shaking and fragile. He has a pulse but no heart. It breaks anyway.
(Steve is dead.)
Tony doesn't know if he reaches for the glass or if the glass reaches for him but it's in his hand, so, he drinks.
It tastes like blood when he swallows and he wonders who hit him this time. He hopes there's no video footage, hopes that he was sober enough to pick a fight with someone that Pepper won't yell at him for later.
Actually, it's been a long time since Pepper has yelled at him.
(Dead.)
Tony doesn't worry about it though. He drinks another glass and waits for the seconds to stop adding up in his head. They don't make sense, running sloppily from days into weeks.
Adding up when, really, they should be counting down.
How much longer, Tony thinks and is surprised by how much it hurts to do that, how dizzy he gets before he throws up. Nobody is around to listen anyway, only Jarvis who cannot answer his questions and no longer attempts to try.
I'm falling apart, Tony thinks, almost gratefully, as he looks at himself in the mirror. Sunken eyes, slumped shoulders and grey sickly skin. He looks unhealthily thin, his grin twisted like a car accident. There is no happy ending to this story.
And still the countdown runs backward, quicker now and the weeks become months.
Tony refuses to leave his lab and the world turns because it must, because Tony is not that important and there is some else wearing his suit now, saving people.
And who, Tony wonders and it breaks him, will replace Captain America?
It'll stop hurting soon, he reasons, as months become a year. It has to.
He waits for it to scar, for it to numb, for his robot heartbeats to stop aching.
(Steve is dead.)