Hello! So for this fanfic, I'm going to try something a bit different. If you guys have any cool quotes that are inspirational, angsty, funny, or whatever, and you want an Ironman piece based around the quote, PM me! I'll message back if I'm writing a chapter around it. Hope you enjoy this chapter!

"Heroes don't crumble because they're too weak. They crumble because they've been too strong for too long."

-Anonymous

It all started when Jarvis was recycled into Vision.

In reality, it started when Howard ignored Tony as a child. When Afghanistan took him and transformed him into a fire-breathing monster. When Obie's hand reached out to pull out his reactor.

But when Tony woke up, thrashing and turning, and there was no comforting British accent to pull him awake from his nightmares, that's when the dust started falling. There was no one else to run to, with Pepper away for a meeting, and Rhodey on a military trip. And hell no, he wasn't going to spill out his guts to the Avengers, after they so obviously blamed him for the whole Ultron incident (he couldn't blame them though, it was his fault).

So no one pulled him awake from his nightmares, and it grew, writhed into something menacing. It dripped black, and pulled at his sanity, his heart, his mind. It crept through his doors at night, swam in his dreams, until he could no longer escape from it day and night.

He named that lovely specimen guilt. Because who didn't need a healthy dose of guilt everyday?

He had so much to be responsible for, and it's like carrying the world on his shoulders. And no one seemed to notice, not the dust falling, the cracks appearing, that he sometimes wondered, was he that good at masks and duct tape? Or was that what everyone saw when they looked at him sauntering into the kitchen every morning, and they just didn't care?

He envied their ability to be able to talk with Vision casually, to not feel the loss that that the death of Jarvis should have caused them, but didn't. Because he was only a robot, and Tony could just make a new AI, of course.

Whenever he tried to talk with Vision, Tony always left early with some muttered excuse, because he couldn't bear hearing Vision's voice without the snark of Jarvis, without the weight behind them that he was always going to be there for Tony, no matter what.

But he'll get used to it in time. Already, he had been talking to Vision in larger intervals, and if Vision noticed anything off, well he didn't say anything.

Nevertheless, strength was power. Power was safety and security. Oh, the blessings he had as a child to learn that lesson very early. To learn that doubt was lurking in every crack, and that any friend could become a betrayer. So he had to stay strong, because there would be no one else catching him if he did fall.

He always had a good childhood.

But that day, he walked into the kitchen, head held high, sunglasses on, ready to rock the world like he always did, and when he saw the disapproval in Steve's eyes, the annoyance flash across Clint and Natasha's faces, and felt the tension in the air… well, they didn't notice the dust, did they?

The nightmare was still playing on, and on, and he's drowning in an abyss of black mush, and he couldn't see another hand reaching to pull him out.

So he just grabbed a cup of coffee and lazily sat down, smirking, "Those sure are some nice pjs, Cap."

When Pepper left, he stopped sleeping.

It wasn't like he never did that before, but it's just this time, he definitely owned the whole "sleep is for the weak" expression. It's work, then hopefully snatching a bite of food before working some more, and then making fun of Steve's new heroic cat rescue, and then saving the world, and then working again.

He had no time for sleep. Not with all the repairs pouring in from both SHIELD and Avengers, and his inventions for SI. It didn't help that Clint managed to dent his bow a couple of times when he decided to smack a bunch of mutant bunnies on the head instead of being a normal person and shooting them.

And then Tony had to realize that it was because Clint ran out of arrows, which was such a stupid reason that Tony swore to himself that he was going to invent something that could miniaturize arrows and then expand them at any notice. So that took away a few more days of sleep, but it was worth it in the end when Clint jumped around like a little kid when he got his new-and-improved quiver back.

Anyways, the longest time he had gone without crashing was 14 days, a month ago, longer than the official world record, so hah to that high school student. He slept for two days straight after that, but it wasn't like anyone noticed, so he was fine. But he didn't want the press to know about his slightly unhealthy coping mechanisms, because the media would be drawn to that like flies to a dead carcass.

But he had another AI, Friday, his baby girl who mothered over him as much as Jarvis used to, so he was no longer waking up to silence and then the frantic whirling of DUMM-E, U, and Butterfingers. But she never had the same constant presence of Jarvis, and she wasn't as experienced as him.

Don't get him wrong. Friday's great and all, but she'll never be the same as Jarvis.

And with Pepper gone, and absolutely no one to stop the nightmares, he just didn't sleep. It was bad enough when Jarvis wasn't there, but now, his lifeline just floated away, and he couldn't even blame her, because in her defense, he was a handful. And he couldn't help but wonder, if his mom managed to work it out with Howard, was there something wrong with him so that Pepper couldn't work it out with him too?

Sleep brought the scalding heat of the desert, the frigid cold of space, and the smile of a foe once friend. The accusing eyes of the people he murdered, the people who turned into demons because somehow, he always created something that managed to bite him back in the ass.

And still, the team expected him to stay strong, to manage all the Sokovia Accords issues, and it wasn't like he had enough time before. They didn't notice him slowly fading away, because honestly, he couldn't show them that he was. People were still relying on him to be the confident narcissist on the team, the smirk and the swagger, the guy with all the insane plans.

He was alive. He was Tony Stark, for goodness sakes. He didn't need a knight in shining armor, because he's not some helpless damsel. Give him a lab, a hammer, and a couple of chemicals, and he could blow up the house and the whole village along with it. He wasn't helpless, and he didn't need some people to baby over him like he couldn't do anything himself.

So when he didn't sleep, it just didn't matter, because there were other issues that were much larger, much more important at hand. Like the potential world domination of weird alien creatures in outer space. Or the whole Sokovia Accords issue.

But at night, when all of that swagger was stripped away, all he could feel was the guilt creeping up on him, eating him alive, like maggots wriggling away in a moldy peach. And then, that's when he decided that he was just going to stay awake another day. Tomorrow, he'll get a few hours of rest (but tomorrow never comes).

It's another sleepless night and bleary eyes at daytime, but Tony managed to drag himself up for breakfast, because he needed a cup of coffee. Desperately.

He probably needed to install a coffee machine in his lab. The first one broke after he decided to use it as a football when he was drunk.

In the kitchen, he collapsed, hot cup of heaven in his hand, listening to the mumbled conversations of the people next to him. Bruce and Thor were missing, off to Narnia doing whatever buff/green guys do in their spare time, and Clint was busy cackling over Steve's permanent sharpie mustache. Vision's busily chatting with Wanda, and Tony mused sleepily how both of them would make an odd couple. Would they have robotic babies with creepy magical powers?

The chatter in the background was just so comforting though, slowly dragging him into a sleepy fuzziness, until he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer. And then it faded away, to the sounds of space and the cold, unblinking stars ahead.

He could feel the unsympathetic frigidness of the space, ready to swallow him and his insignificance.

His failures, Ultron, all his attempts were useless in face of the enemy in space. A huge purple hand, ready to crush them all. And nothing to stop it, stop the armies, stop the sheer destruction, he was just a prick of nothingness in a sea of activity.

But it wasn't the space that scared him, nor the twinkling of the unmoving stars.

It was the vastness that sent chills down his back. For a second, he wondered if that meant his destruction, the sheer amount of people that he killed, did it actually matter in this emptiness? Did he even matter?

He couldn't help but snort, because now was not the time to have an existential crisis, especially since this couldn't be real.

It was just a dream.

But it felt so real. The aloneness, and the dust falling from the sky, the ultimate failure that he couldn't stop, because no one would listen.

He spotted the Avengers sprawled on ground that seemed to stretch on forever, and all of them are so, so quiet, that he couldn't help but sink down to his knees because he's crumbling, and nothing's working.

Every time he tried to fix his mistakes, he failed, and instead, somehow managed to create a new mechanism to destroy the entire world.

"Tony, wake up."

Everyone was burning up in flames.

"TONY."

He jolted awake with a gasp, and immediately fell into a coughing fit, because he needed air, not the thick suffocation of space wrapping around him. Steve's worried (mustached) face was looming over him, and it felt way too similar to the people standing above him in Afghanistan. Where was Pepper when he needed her?

Friday's silent, because he explicitly told her never to involve herself in any of these situations if they ever occur. It would be too suspicious if she mothered over him like he had these sort of... problems frequently. Although he should have known better, since falling asleep at the kitchen table was such an amateur mistake.

Everyone was mumbling, moving around, and Steve was still in his face. He needed space, order, not a chaotic environment that mirrored a certain dusty cave in the middle of a desert.

He couldn't catch his breath.

He could see Natasha glancing at him through his fog of panic, and then she pulled back Steve to give him more room (she definitely deserved a box of poptarts now). Quickly, he pulled himself together, temporarily plugging in the holes and taping up the cracks, even though he was definitely going to fall apart sometime this night.

At least it would be better than falling apart in front of his teammates.

A voice broke him out of his musings, and he silently cursed to himself, because he's being way less attentive than he should have been. Stupid sleep-deprivation.

"You were shivering in your sleep."

That was Clint, staring at him concernedly, and god, he was Tony Stark, he didn't need anyone's pity or care. He was fine, sort of (actually not really, but they didn't need to know that). But now everyone was staring at him, and that couldn't do because it was nothing, nothing was happening, and he couldn't open himself to let them see that there was actually something happening. The feeling of a cold hand reaching inside of his chest to pull out his reactor was always with him, and he wasn't going to make the same mistake again.

People were relying on him, and he had to stay upright, as if he wasn't slowly breaking down from the inside. So he just raised an eyebrow. "Awww, so Legolas does actually care."

Clint opened his mouth to retort, but he trudged on mock-gleefully. "And no, if you think I'm going to sleep with you just because you said that, be disappointed."

Clint snorted loudly at that. "It would probably be you who would be disappointed."

"You wish it would be me."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Steve look away, fiddling with his hands uncomfortably, and he hid a grin. One down, four left to go.

He gulped down some of his coffee, and lazily stretched back in his seat, keeping his smile easygoing. Wanda stared at him for a couple seconds more, before returning to her conversation with Vision as if he wasn't worth the effort. Not a surprise, but sure. He'll take it. Honestly, it's just Natasha that he's worried about, because she could see through people much better than anyone else (compulsive, self-destructive, narcissistic, of course that's what he was).

"I've got work to do, things to be at, and not much time to spend at a pow-wow session here. Nat, how are your super snazzy gauntlets doing?"

Truthfully, they were actually really in need of a checkup lately, and his schedule to look them over got pushed way back because he's stacked with work and repairs, and he really did need to make a time machine soon so he could at least have more time to do very necessary repairs. Natasha sighed, but threw him one of her Widow's bite gauntlets. "One of them hasn't been working as well as the other one."

He caught the black ring tossed at him, and motioned to the other one, snapping his fingers.

"Gimmie that one. Going to do some more upgrades."

Natasha slid the other one off her arm with a glare, and handed it over. Tony smirked, and then grabbed his coffee and stood up, pushing his chair back. With the two gauntlets in hand, he turned away, throwing over his shoulder, "If a guy wants to dream about throwing snowballs at the Hulk, just let him be."

That's definitely Clint's cough of laughter in the background.

He could still feel Natasha's questioning stare on his back, but he wasn't expecting to win over everyone anyways. If only Natasha was mildly suspicious, then Tony would consider that a pretty big win.

He strolled out, hearing the conversations flicker into existence again, and he inwardly let out a sigh of relief, because he's still safe and strong.

He's crumbling and there's no one to see him fall.