Sharp claws wrap tightly around his heart, squeezing until his eyes snap open and he realizes he's crying. He batters clenched fists uselessly against the mattress, kicking out with feet tangled in too many layers of sheets and blankets, he can't fight his way free. He can't breathe. Every half-breath he manages to pull in sears his lungs. The pounding of his frantic heartbeat is loud enough to drown him and he can't slow it down. His fingers skip over his skin and he wraps them tight around his wrist, feeling for his pulse, willing it to slow down, willing it to stop. Not forever. Just for a minute. Just so he can get control. His body won't give in to his commands and so he only fights it harder, kicking and screaming and cursing at the empty air around him, the images raking at his mind. A jolt of pain surges through him and he looks down. It's only then that he realizes he's fallen out of bed and landed on his ass. Fucking hell. He looks around, still dazed, and he sees nothing but shadows and searing light. He understands enough to recognize that the light comes from screens mounted on the walls all around him: the Stark Technologies logo glows comfortingly blue in the darkness.
"JARVIS?" he manages to whisper.
"How can I be of assistance, Mr. Stark?"
The question is overwhelming. He sits there, on the floor next to the twin bed he'd dragged in here countless months ago because he hadn't wanted to keep Pepper awake when he inevitably spent all of his nights pacing and fighting against nothing. Then, it became easier to justify sleeping in the lab, or trying to. When his eyes snapped open and his heart raced so quickly that he knew there'd be no hope of getting any true rest, at least he was already in a place where he could do something about it. Distract himself, without having to worry about worrying other people, or having to answer constant questions. He lies to them and he lies to himself and he doesn't sleep, ever.
"Mr. Stark?" JARVIS probes again, quietly.
"I just want to sleep," Tony murmurs. JARVIS says nothing. It's not the type of request Tony usually makes, so maybe the AI is waiting for a more familiar command. Or maybe he honestly hadn't heard the words; Tony had been barely speaking aloud, and what escaped his lips were more disconnected syllables than any coherent demand. Tony presses the heels of his hands against eyelids squeezed shut, and takes a few deep breaths. It's enough to stop the tears, at least, if not the racing thoughts behind them. He pulls himself to his feet, and manages, somehow, to walk the few steps across the room to the console that sits in the center of it. He leans forward, resting his full weight on his palms pressed flat against the smooth metal panels on either side of the keyboard and input device. The screens burst to life as soon as he does so; they recognize him, and they begin churning out information: dozens of charts and graphs and little snippets of video, all of the questions and queries he's input over the past nights, weeks of desperate attempts to understand what's happening to the world around him. He can fix it, he knows he can, if he can only wrap his head around exactly what is broken.
He looks down, at the scars surrounding the implant in his chest, the pulsing glow that tells him his heart is still beating. He saved his own life when everyone said it was impossible, he did it under fire. The staccato bursts of gunfire still scream inside his head, every night. His heart squeezes so tightly within his chest that he's afraid he's dying. Every night. Every. Night.
He just wants to sleep.
The gunfire dreams are better than the ones where he is falling. Falling and screaming and no one catches him, and he never lands. His eyes snap open and he's still falling. Falling and screaming and dying forever, and it never ends.
He looks down and his heart is still beating, a glowing reflection against the palm of his hand.
"JARVIS?" he asks, louder this time.
"How can I be of assistance, Mr. Stark?"
His specific request changes every night: sometimes he asks for prototypes, or phone logs, sometimes he fixes up his suits even though there's nothing wrong with them. The only thing that stays constant is his request that JARVIS alert him when the sun begins to rise. The computer scans weather reports, farmers almanac, the security images that display the grounds outside of Tony's mansion. The sunrise creeps earlier and earlier, cutting short by slow degrees Tony's self-imposed isolation.
This morning, as JARVIS chirps a trilling alarm that is deliberately set to remind the human listening to it of a bird call, someone else interrupts.
"Tony?" Pepper asks.
Her voice is full of warmth, and concern, and it sets him on edge as he races to find an excuse, or a distraction. He could make her coffee, the way he does every morning, as they watch the sunrise together through the expansive windows of the kitchen on the floor above them. He stares at her, frozen and frightened, and she frowns at him from beneath a halo of uncombed red-blond hair, a bathrobe barely covering her pale skin.
He shakes his head, trying and failing to put into words all of the questions and reasons and things that he knows and can't put into any clear order. He claws with blunted fingers at the implant in his chest, and he looks up, helplessly, willing her to understand. "I can't sleep," he finally admits.
He repeats it again, when she says nothing.
"I can't sleep."