Really, he had no one to blame but himself.
Tony Stark's only friend in the world right now was his own damn shadow, and the echoes of his shaking voice and sobbing breaths.
Pepper was gone, because twice in one fight he'd fallen from the sky, and it was really a miracle he'd survived twice. Rhodey and he...fuck, really they hadn't spoken since the Hammer incident, and he didn't expect them to. He couldn't blame either of them, and he never would.
Bruce was somewhere...somewhere nearby, but how can you tell someone you barely know that you're falling apart like this?
And then...then there was no one.
That was his whole, shitty life: two lost friends, and a man who was sometimes a giant, green rage monster but really shouldn't have to listen to a single damn word Tony Stark says.
And it wasn't just the loneliness here. It wasn't just that he'd never be loved; or that he'd never be able to show that he wasn't as strong as he made everyone think he was. It was that he couldn't even dream himself a better world.
The nightmare this time...the thorn trying to rend him apart was his father. The great fucking Howard Stark.
God, it would've been so much easier if he'd never watched that damn blooper reel of the Expo's intro.
If he'd never heard Howard tell him that he was his greatest creation.
Because that was the one lie that Howard never should have said.
Howard, who'd once looked him in the eye and told him he was worthless compared to what Howard could've been doing with every second he'd wasted on his son.
Oh, how wonderful that particular memory had been to relive last night.
Why Tony couldn't exhaust himself to the point of dreamlessness, Tony would never want to analyze.
It'd always been an act, the loving father of Anthony Edward Stark: that's what that had been, and damn Nick Fury for planting even the smallest seed of an idea that it had been anything but an act.
Tony pulled his knees to his chest, curling one arm around him and the other around his side like a shield, keeping the world away.
In many ways, it was worse than that time he'd had to shut off the fountain in his Malibu house to stop the sound of trickling water. When he'd gone to sleep in his workshop with Dummy and You running around just to make noise and the lights all blazingly on because you couldn't get that in a cave.
This was PTSD of the heart. This was a lifetime of men better than him looming over him telling him he wasn't and would never be good enough. This was Rhodey turning his back on him-twice; this was Obie taking his heart and trying to kill Pepper with it; this was Howard with all his great accomplishments, and not a single mention of him ever on that list. This was Captain America-his childhood idol-telling him the same things he knew his father would've. Sneering at the idea of him being a hero. Throwing it in his face, that he'd done all he had.
This was a world that neither wanted nor needed him, and what the hell was he doing in it? Wouldn't it just be better if he wasn't?
He thought of doing it. Of ending it. Suicide wasn't something anyone thought he'd be able to do, just like heroism. Well, one thing he could prove them wrong on.
He wondered if they'd get Rhodey to replace Iron Man.
It was just a handful of pills.
He pictured an empty fucking funeral.
A bullet might be better.
He had nothing keeping him here.
Using a rope would be construed the wrong way.
He'd lost everything he'd ever had. And he'd never really had anything to begin with.
"Do you know what I would've said at your funeral?" Steve asked, looking into the distance, "I would've said you were the best hero of all of us. Goddamn it all, Tony."
A/N: There could be more. I don't know.