Tony Stark is his own weight on his chest, metal walls placed where his vulnerability lies.
He is blue light filtering through cotton shirts, nightmares of gritty sand in his eyesearsmouth, and a doctor's kind eyes behind broken glasses fighting to stay open; pale lips whispering last words ("Don't waste it. Don't waste your life."), and then another good man is dead, and all Tony wants to say is 'I'm sorry, it should have been me, I'm so sorry.', but he's too late, as always.
He is the whirring sound no can really hear, criss-crossed scars on a chest torn open to place a beacon of his genius and his sins on display. Everyone looks, but nobody really sees, and he tells himself it's okay, and pretends he's as transparent as the walls in the lab he hides away in; pretends that his only friends aren't composed of things he's made or people he pays to work for him or government liaisons whose orders will always come first.
Tony is a billionaire and a playboy, how could he ever be lonely? (He focuses on building more things that will make him too useful to dispose of and turns up the music to drown out the truth that mocks him in the ringing silence.)
His heart is weak (both ways), and he's a child turned young man turned man, too used to big, empty houses and being ignored and being a disappointment. From cups of frothy milk and apple juice, he graduated early to liquor and drinks that hit too hard on his small body, his father's sweaty palms and drunken smile teaching him how to wrap his still-soft hands around a glass and swallow downdowndown.
(His mother smiles blankly, lips bright red, perfect, not a smudge in place, and turns her head the other way.)
"You're a Stark," his father had told him once, words slurring, eyes glazed over, "and alcohol puts iron in our veins, and steel in our minds.". Tony nods in agreement, committing the few words that weren't loaded with curses and disapproval into memory. Years later, he'll swirl his vodka around, listen to the tinkling of the ice cubes against the sides, eyes dead and smile as sharp as Howard Stark's used to be, and he'll wonder if he would have turned out happier if he wasn't so desperate to prove that he really was his father's son.
He'll tip his head back and finish everything in one go, and tell himself no, he'd be exactly the same, because Stark men were made to be strong, and drink stronger, after all.
Tony Stark is the world-weary tiredness deep in his bones, but he'll shrug himself off and act like he's "Fine, just fine, now go away, because I've got things to build and people to scandalize.". He'll flash teeth for the cameras, sunglasses on to cover the bruise-dark bags under his eyes, hands raised in a peace sign, and he'll pray that no one notices the fine tremors of his fingers.
He lives on green protein shakes and runs on barely any sleep; never knew how to be a real boy, and now he doesn't know how to just be. He'll show affection through compliments hidden in insults, and casually spending too much money on gifts thought-out-but-sometimes-not-really, because no one taught him what to do with people you actually want in your life. He's a man who's got everything, but nothing, and even if it takes almost his whole life, people will finally come, and they'll see him, and they'll stay. He discovers love, finds the steps to letting his walls down around red hair and pearl-white teeth and 'Will that be all, Mr. Stark?'s, and even though it takes him forever to figure the instructions out, she's still there waiting for him like he knows she always will.
He learns how to fight beside others, learns that maybe he's a team-player after all, and, for all the ways he calls himself out on being the most selfish, the least heroic amongst them, he won't ever hesitate to make the self-sacrifice play. He's unbearable and eccentric and incredibly hard to deal with, but he shakes off possibly broken bones and laughs into the comm-link with blood on his teeth and down the side of his mouth, and gives everyone stupid nicknames and gets knocked down and gets back up again.
He's Tony Stark, an Icarus that flew and fell and survived the fall, and he's gone through his whole life being someone else, but now he's back up under the sun and flying and living.
And maybe he's not so good at it because there's still a lot of him that's broken, but he tries.
He is Tony Stark, and he tries.