[Chapter] Title: Code Red

[Chapter] Rating: T (16+)

[Chapter] Summary: The team witnesses one of Tony's panic attacks. They don't have much effect… Well, at least there's Harley, right?

Prompt at: avengerkink dot livejournal dotcomslash 17385 dothtml ?thread=38907881#t38907881

[Chapter] Warnings: Panic attack, mentions of depression, Tony breaks up with Pepper, EWE IM3, IM3 spoilers, language

"Avengers, assemble!"

Tony is the master of his tower; he built it, of course he is! With JARVIS's help, he knows everything that goes on in the renamed Avengers (nee Stark) Tower.

The way Steve's shout – augmented by JARVIS's speakers, utilized for just this purpose at times like these – rings through Tony's closed off, darkened room would have been par for the course at night. But it wasn't night, and the sound pierced Tony's head like a sledgehammer. He kind of wants to cry.

He's not a creep – that is to say, he doesn't care to watch his teammates during their more… intimate moments – but he does have JARVIS keeping track 24/7 of their vitals. That's really how it started, how he learned that – even with Iron Man, even under the heat of the Afghani sands, even as the only Avenger who fights with a clear mind who is also incidentally a civilian – he's not as crazy as he thought he might be.

There's things he's been through, it goes without saying, that as a civilian, he had no point of reference for. And after the fact, the way that he finds himself reacting to those events, those memories, those scars… Until the other Avengers agreed to live in his tower, until he got a chance to see those who'd been trained for this kind of thing (as much as anyone can be trained for dealing with giant, telekinetic squids rising out of the water over Long Island beach, anyway), and slowly realized he wasn't alone. That didn't mean that he wanted to announce the fact this way, didn't mean that he wanted his weaknesses aired before the team in just under a week's time, all at once.

It took some time to recognize each of their tells, each of their hair triggers, helpless moments, points of determination (both not to fall prey to their own demons and the point when there is no other choice but to do so), and comforts. While Tony, himself, would not be enough in most cases to rouse his teammates, he prides himself in being able to bring them out of lesser attacks at least by being able to identify an attack, and get them what they do need.

Of course, none of the rest of the team knows this. They all think the planning and calling and such are just in-built functions of JARVIS, and not something Tony keeps a very close eye on.

It's because, at heart, every single one of them are lonely, suspicious, paranoid survivors, to be honest. Tony gleefully adds himself to that pile. No one – well, almost no one – is allowed to see him at his worst. If he has to drag himself hand over hand to his lab and initiate lock-down in a scene far too similar to when Ob—Stane stole his reactor, so be it! A Stark's moment of weakness is not for others to witness. Too bad that it's not an option anymore.

He still doesn't feel bad, about watching his teammates when he did everything he could to hide himself.

Most of the time.

Everyone seems to have two stages – the first is a hyped-up version of a run-of-the-mill panic attack, which JARVIS calls 'Code [color of the Avenger in distress]', and announces to the other inhabitants as the situation arises and is recognized. The triggers for these vary for everyone, depending on how their day has gone, how much sleep they've had, how much stress they're under: obvious things.

Not just anyone can approach them in some cases, because only very certain people are recognized and can lead the afflicted out of their attack. Tony has had conversations with JARVIS to this affect, and whenever the need arises, the AI "has the tendency to" ask the most appropriate Avenger for assistance, depending on who – and how – someone is panicking.

When Bruce's Code Green is called, he's a little green around the eyes; he's always just a little out of breath; his hands clench and unclench without pause; and more often than not, he grinds his teeth. His file says that Betty Ross could bring him out of a Code Green almost faster than it could rise up… but she's not around. The only one he reliably recognizes (and doesn't see as a threat) is Clint, because in this stage, at the tipping point of a Hulk-out, his coherency is even worse than it is as the Hulk. If anyone else approaches him, Bruce is more likely to convince himself that they're there to lock him up, and then he Hulks out. He has almost inhuman control of his emotional state, for obvious reasons, but he's had enough Code Green's in the last year (since the tower was filled by the Avengers) that Clint can reliably and comfortably talk him down in about half an hour or so.

When Code Purple is called on Clint, it's usually a little late (and Tony will never tell Clint that his is 'purple' because, with his SHIELD-issue black suit and Natasha's already-taken color, Tony just decided to point out the fact that he was straight as his drawn bow. In the most crass way available, of course; he's Tony.). Clint tends to hole up in his nests – buried in the ventilation system that Tony specifically re-engineered to be just large enough for a man Clint's size and flexibility to climb around, with slightly larger pockets to nest in – when his wits escape him. He is a strange one as far as the team goes, because he tends to recognize everyone, but that doesn't stop his panic. He generally comes out of it on his own after two or three hours. If that doesn't work, Either Natasha or Phil will crawl after him; a day later, they'll return, and act like they were never missing to begin with.

Natasha's Code Black is dangerous. She is a trained assassin, after all. She gets colder than usual, and her words get clipped, short, perhaps disappear altogether. Tony and JARVIS know her heart rate speeds up incrementally, but it's only enough to be noticeable if compared after the fact, so it's not really helpful. Other than that, no one really notices when she freaks out – even Phil and Clint, who've known her the longest, and know her the best, sometimes have trouble spotting it in her. But like Bruce, she has an uncanny recognition of her own emotional states, and usually takes it in her own hands, either signing up for a brutal two or three-day mission, or holing up in her floor on almost total lock-down. Only Clint and Phil are allowed on her floor when she gets like that.

Phil is a special case – he is for all of them, really. They got attached to his little Agent soul, and then he apparently died. There really was no helping how they all grew that much more attentive to him when out of the blue, one day, he showed up pressed and polished at the Tower door, claiming that Director Fury was done trying to find a suitable handler for his Initiative team (consequently, none of the Avengers trust Nick 'The-Lying-Liar-Who-Lies' Fury anymore). His Code Grey is a regular old panic attack: shaky hands, out of breath, panicky, chest pains, lasting only for ten to fifteen minutes. But all of the team does their best to be there for Phil when it happens, and he's cognizant enough to recognize and accept any of them, even if he doesn't so much appreciate the over-crowding that happens when they get over-concerned about him.

Thor's Code Yellow is pretty tame in comparison to everyone else's. He grew up in a society that expected him to participate in great battles, and love them. Panic attacks really don't factor into that kind of upbringing; it's just not in his psyche to panic over a fight or enemy long-passed. Most of his Code Yellow's occur just as he's waking from a nightmare, are usually about Loki at his worst, and only last long enough for Thor to wake up… there's still copious amounts of thunder and static charge, though – in an electronically-savvy place like the tower, they have to be careful when Thor hits his bad days. JARVIS, suffice it to say, is never amused.

More like his human counterparts than most would expect of the genetically-enhanced super-soldier, Steve's own Cody Blue really are just panic attacks, like Phil's. That's what everyone misses when they see Steve – the man has been enhanced, but not altered. He's at the peak of human condition, and it's amazing what he can do, but at the end of the day he's still only human. He's not been trained passed subconscious levels, like government agencies have a tendency to do to their action-oriented operatives, like Clint and Natasha. Tony is thankful for that – it means that Steve's Code Blue's don't last too long, and the biggest danger anyone is in when he goes under is that maybe he forgets himself for a moment or two, and grips someone's arms tightly enough to bruise. Steve's so conscious of himself that, even lost in the haze of a panic attack, he'd never break bone.

And then there's Tony.

As stated before, even if it dredged up memories of the time his figurative heart was ripped out of his chest, he's vain enough to try and keep his issues out of the lime light. But even the best of precautions fail eventually. No system can calibrate for every possible outcome, period and still function. This just doesn't happen to be his week.

Three days ago, the team had convened on the communal floor, as per schedule. Phil had been determined to bring the team together outside of battle, come hell or high water, when he first showed up, and it had manifested in Movie Night. Every Thursday, barring calls to assemble.

Even Tony could admit, it had been fun to culturally educate Thor and Steve, and to see just what everyone preferred in a movie. And to bond without bloodshed, but it wouldn't be said aloud.

This, however, was not fun.

Clint had decided to go with a classic, revamped, in the 2009 reboot of Star Trek. That would have been fine… if Tony'd recalled in enough time to brace himself for the appearance of the big-ass wormhole in the middle of space. Bracing oneself for a known trigger is enough to withstand it for short periods, if one has the mental wherewithal and appropriate time from the incident in question that it no longer is an immediate concern – that was where Tony had firmly situated himself for about six months now. Something as small as a passing mention in casual conversation – there and gone again, in place of a new piece of conversation – of the Battle wouldn't reduce him to gasping shakes. But being blindsided by a giant wormhole in the latest piece of entertainment?… Damn it all.

He'd taken one long, lasting look at the swirling vortex of Enterprise-doom, felt the phantom pull of his own Cube-powered menace, and was staggering back from the entertainment system – and his unsuspecting teammates – before he was really aware of moving at all. He'd stopped panicking at the drop of a hat months ago, so this one hit him all the worse for the recent reprieve.

Several cries of shock and alarm hung distantly in his roaring ears as he thumped, hard and real, against the back wall furthest from the television, then slumped down to curl around his up-drawn knees. A tiny voice in the back of his mind informed him sardonically that he was really going to regret that decision to stop at the quickest 'safe spot', but he ignored it easily: that rational voice would be loud enough again, given either ten or fifteen minutes for the attack to burn out on its own, or something to knock it loose.

"Sir, I'm detecting a Code Red. Shall I initiate the Tennessee Protocol?" JARVIS requested on the edge of his hearing. The others began babbling, their combined noise drowning out any response Tony might've made; they were a bright lot, and knew well-enough to figure out what Code Red meant, even if they'd never heard it before.

Part of Code Red's process was that if Tony didn't tell JARVIS to stop (or, alternatively, didn't say anything at all), then the AI was to go ahead with the TP. After a long pause, presumably as the TP was activated, for the first time since he laid eyes on the graphics of the Trekkie wormhole, Tony heard a voice clearly, sounding from JARVIS's speakers.

"Mr. Stark? It's ten at night… Are you okay? JARVIS called."

"A kid?" Tony heard Clint sputter.

"Huh? What's—Who's that? JARVIS, you are the one who called, right? My mom's gonna be mad if I'm on the phone this late for no reason," Harley Keener stated haltingly over the line.

"I am the one who requested you, young master, as per protocol. Sir is having… difficulties." JARVIS soothed the boy. For a moment, there was silence, as everyone involved tried to figure out what was going on.

"Ah, Tony," Harley sighed, realization coloring his tone. "Are you panicking again? 'Cause I swear it wasn't me this time!"

"… kid…!" Tony groan-gasped passed his fear-tight lungs, managing to roll his eyes and convey disdain nonetheless.

"Well it wasn't," Harley responded defensively. "But that's not—Listen Tony, you need to breathe, okay? JARVIS, what's going on?"

"We are in the Tower, young master. It is movie night; an unwise presentation was airing."

"'Unwise'?" Bruce murmured under his breath, sharing a concerned glance with Natasha.

"I—" Harley audibly sighed, but it had fond undertones. "Only you, Mr. Stark, only you. Fine: distractions!"

And in true Harley-fashion, he began to babble, much to the bemusement of the Avengers who were currently not having a panic attack. "Umm… I'm working on a project for the Science Fair at school? Yeah, I got some ideas from some of the stuff you left in my garage – mom was surprised by the way. Some stranger comes by, helps me out of trouble, while filling me with sugar and giving me access to a dangerous mechanical suit, then leaves thousands of dollars worth of stuff in our garage for me? Yeah… I had a hard time convincing her it was okay; I think it was the letter you sent that really convinced her. What kid is gonna be visited by Tony Stark, am I right? Uh… Well, she's seeing someone again. Don't know how I feel about him, but she likes him… What else, what else… Hm… Oh, I really liked that robotics kit you sent me for my birthday! But I never did tell you when it was did I?… Do—Do you even know how old I was turning? That doesn't seem like something you'd take the time to figure out, honestly…! It's twelve, for the record. The box said it was for 18-and-older; do they not know what preteens are capable of, or what? I mean, so I'm a little adv—"

"Kid," Tony tried to butt in, able to breathe with reliability again.

Harley barreled on, unaware of Tony's recovery, "—ced for my age group, but only just a little, really, I'm not that ba—"

"Harley!" Tony snapped. Abruptly, the flood of words ceased, leaving behind an abashed silence. "Thank you. But no, seriously: thanks, kid. I—uh, really, that was… great. Yeah."

"You're welcome," and Tony could hear the comfortable knowing in Harley's voice. He knew just as well as Tony how difficult it was to admit that help had been needed, had been received, and – more than that – had been grudgingly, gratefully received. "So you're okay now?"

"Right as rain, kid," he grunted.

"Huh. Well, stay clear of movies, okay? I mean, it's gotta be tough enough just living there, right? No need to make it worse."

"… Harley!"

"What? I didn't actually say anything!"

"Yes, thank you! Harley Keener, ladies and gentlemen, the semantics expert!" Tony snarked.

"Are you seeing a therapist yet?"

"Shut up. Shut up and go to bed; boys your age shouldn't even be awake right now, should they? Don't you have, like, a bedtime or something? Seven o'clock is… usually a kid's bedtime, right JARVIS?"

"Seven?" Harley spluttered, offended. "I'm twelve, Tony, not five!"

"Of course you are; but, bedtime? You have one, don't you? Surely your mother—"

"Yes! Yes, okay, I've got a bedtime. If you have to know, it's in an hour."

"No it's not – it's right now."

"What? Why?!"

"Because I said so. Go – get off the phone. Go to bed; you've done your job. Thank you and good night!" Tony dismissed him in the usual, brisk Stark manner, even waving his hand (and conveniently ignoring the sheen of sweat still on his face from moments ago).

Harley huffed audibly over the line, and then – in a softer, more affectionate tone, unknowingly mirroring those who put up with Tony willingly on a daily basis – Harley muttered, "Yeah, alright – I'll go. I'm not going to bed, but I'll get off the phone. Have a good night, Tony."

Tony would never admit it, but a hint of affection seeped into his voice as he muttered in reply, "G'night, Harley. Sleep well."

The call disconnected with a faint click. And then Tony remembered – far too belatedly to do anything about it that could salvage his dignity – about the others. They were standing in a loose ring around where he'd pressed himself against the wall what felt like forever ago, nobody too close, but also nobody farther away than the middle of the room. Each of them wore expressions – or, lacking that, in the case of a super-composed Phil and Natasha, gave off the air of – confusion, concern, and hesitant guessing. It was Steve who finally spoke up.

"Tony," and his voice was laced with heavy concern, and just a bit of the Captain Tone, "What was that?"

"It was nothing." Nobody could accuse him of not trying.

"Tony." The concern was still etched into that face, but Steve was in full Captain-mode now – he was in charge, and he expected to be answered.

"A Code Red," Tony threw out, hoping to win the proverbial lottery and be able to get around the conversation, just this once, by being truthful but vague.

Unfortunately for Tony, vague was all well and good, but Steve wasn't stupid, either. His blue gaze sharpened, flickered up to the ceiling, over to Tony, back to the paused movie, and again to Tony before he nodded. "That vortex—"

"Let it go, Capsicle!" Tony snapped, too close to a snarl to be anything other than uncomfortable, desperate.

"We all have bad memories, Stark," Natasha slipped in, eyes sharp.

"And we can work around them," Phil volunteered calmly, "but only if we know they exist in the first place. Having trouble with something is normal – we've all got our triggers, it's part of the job – but we won't know that we need to do anything if you approach a trigger if we don't know it doesn't exist."

Tony ducked his head, avoiding gazes as his fists clenched at his sides and his team ganged up on him.

"It sounded like that boy knew what was going on, Tony. I'm sure Clint never would've picked that movie if he'd known you would've had problems with it." Bruce insisted.

"Of course!"Clint yelped, earnest. "That's what we do for everyone. Damn, Stark, I didn't mean to choose something that would prod sensitive places; you're just so quiet about everything that nobody knew you needed that kind of consideration! Here I was, thinking you were some sort of super-civilian, too."

"I'm fine!" Tony protested, unwilling to meet anyone's eye.

"Obviously you're not, Tony," Steve disagreed. "That was a break down, pure and simple."

"Man of Iron," Thor offered his opinion, voice subdued and concerned. "Shield-brothers know about one another. It is part of the warrior's pact, part of fighting alongside your brother, to know their deepest fears as they know your own. It is not the way, to hide yourself from us."

"Hide myself from you…?" Tony echoed, and heard his own words from far away. His chest tingled with building rage, and he staggered to his feet, finally meeting searching gazes. He watched dispassionately as they flinched away from his fierce eyes and the tight, rictus grin his teeth had stretched into. A harsh bark of laughter pulled incredulously from his throat. "Hide myself from you?!"

"Fuck that!" His arm swept wildly out, as though to strike one of them though they were all farther away than his arm's reach, or to swipe the conversation away.

"You want to know what's bothering me? Where the fuck were all of you after that battle, then, when I was waking up from fucking nightmares three and four and five times a damn night?! Where were you when Pepper was trying to keep me together, when all that made sense to me was building more and better suits?! Where the fucking hell were any of you when the Mandarin took over all the American television networks, when bombs were launched at my home, or when the news was sure I was dead?! Where the fuck were you?"

"What I know is that, after diving head-first into a wormhole with a nuke on my back, what we did was grab Loki, send him back to Asgard, and went our damn separate ways. What I do know was that I did my best to pull myself back together. What I know was that I tried to do it by dating Pepper, and screwing us both over – I wasn't ready for a committed relationship, and she didn't deserve to deal with my shit both in her professional and her private life.

"What I do know was that, at the end of the day, the only one who was willing to listen to me – because you weren't here, Rhodey and Pepper wouldn't hear me out, and Happy hardly ever saw me because of his new job – was a ten year old kid whose garage I crashed for supplies, in Tennessee, in the middle of winter! What I do know was that Harley was the only one who was there for me without reserve, and… And he's the only one I can count on."

By the end of his tirade he'd worn himself down, and the last sentence was a raw whisper. The others were wide-eyed and stunned into pained silence, and Tony found himself quietly filling the space in with more words, because if he could do anything, it was talk.

"Pepper knew I had a bad time of it only because we slept together. But most of the time, I didn't sleep in the bed, so she didn't even realize how bad it had gotten until I came clean. Rhodey is my best friend, but I'm not an idiot: I'm a really hard person to be a friend for. He hasn't had a good sense of my reputation or the things I do for a really long time; he's always ready for the next screw up. I couldn't come to him with something like that. Happy was my body guard and my driver, not my confidant. He was so excited to have a job that didn't make people laugh at him, after the whole 'Iron Man's bodyguard' thing, that he hardly ever saw me; that was okay, because he was interested in Pepper anyway – if he was focused on her, I could know she'd be safe.

"When they came at the mansion with enough fire-power to take down an army… I was so scared that Pepper would die. Pepper, who has nothing to do with any of this, except that she is one of the few people who are close to me. And then the house was gone, the armors were gone, and the only link I had to JARVIS was the experimental suit I was wearing. And even that disappeared, when I crashed in Tennessee. I was completely and utterly alone. The last time that happened, I drunk-engineered the world's first high-functioning AI – Dummy – just so I wouldn't—" he faltered, a bitter laugh surprised out of him, and the others flinched, "So I wouldn't have to be so fucking alone."

"But when I party-crashed this—this kid's workspace, and he came at me with a damn potato gun, of all things… He stopped. He listened. I mean, he really listened." And Tony hated just how broken open he sounded by that concept, here, now, in front of his teammates. He was not weak. He wasn't. Grimly, thinking of Harley, he chuckled, "Sure, I mean, at first he was even more fucking likely than anyone to cause a panic attack – kid couldn't shut up about the important stuff if his life depended on it – but he was just as quick to turn right back around and try to fix it, try to distract me, try to bring me back and make the world make sense again."

"Do you even know what it's like, for a guy like me – who has just intuitively knows what the world can throw at him since he was little – to suddenly not know? All the little cogs of the universe just… made sense, or if they didn't, I could figure them out, and then fate decides to just… toss this little screwball in my direction. And the one stable thing in my world was a ten year old kid with an over-worked single mother, absent father, and a view of the world very similar to my own at his age. He's brilliant, you know. And he was my solid rock when the Mandarin came knocking.

"So don't – just don't – come up to me like you know what the fuck's been going on in my life. Don't assume that just because we fought together that you get the keys to my head. Don't think that just because you're the first people I've offered into my home, into my personal space, into my private life – and the first people who have taken it up, and used it, and not run away yet, because one day you'll realize how stupid this is, and then you'll be gone, too – that you can just lord this over me. Just don't." He snarled softly, furious and worn down and broken and bleeding and hurt and desperate and embarrassed all at once.

They all had varying levels of hurt on their faces, of shame and discomfort and guilt. Usually that didn't work on Tony. But even more than he was willing to admit, he had gotten quickly attached to Bruce; somehow, someway, that even the other scientist had never intended – because he was a painful little recluse at the best of times, thanks to the Other Guy – Bruce had gotten under Tony's skin. And with Bruce all contrite like that…

"What if we didn't assume it was due us?" he asked softly, shyly. "What if… What if we, well, asked? What happened, that is? What, then?"

Tony spent a precious few seconds just digesting that, unaware how vulnerable his crumpled expression was. He blinked and it cleared, and the fierce look in his eyes was normal. He grinned savagely at his Science Brother as he grabbed the mousy-haired man by his elbow and towed him out of the room. He wasn't ready for more than an audience-of-one right now. But it was enough.

He flopped onto the over-sized couch in his lab and carelessly directed Bruce into his rolling chair. With a great, Starkian flourish of his arms, he declared in a superior tone, "You asked for it, Brucey!"

Then he heaved a great sigh, as it occurred to him just what he was doing, and in a much more subdued tone, he offered, "A famous man once said, 'We create our own demons.'… Who said that, what does it even mean, doesn't matter – I said it 'cause he said it. So, now, he was famous, and it's basically getting said by two well-known guys…"

"I don't—Uh…" Tony winced as he realized, in his nervousness, he'd rambled right off the subject. "Let me start again," he offered, and Bruce grinned knowingly, nodding, a hint of sleep at the late hour crinkling his eyes. "Let's track this from the beginning – it started in Bern, Switzerland, 1999…"

And he spent the next three hours waxing poetic about his fight against the Mandarin, his work in nowhere-town, Tennessee, and Aldrich Killian.

"… and so, as Christmas morning began, my journey had reached it's end. You start with something pure, something exciting, then come the mistakes, the compromises. We create our own demons. As promised, I got Pepper sorted out; took some tinkering, but then I thought to myself: 'Why stop there?'"

Again, Tony winced, admitting, "Of course, you know how that went. When a practiced surgeon like Yensin tells you that there's no way to remove all the shrapnel without killing the patient, you listen. Otherwise, you go into surgery with great hopes… and come out with an even greater dependence on the continued existence of the Arc Reactor in your chest, and a renewed need to tinker. Pepper was not happy – I still had one suit, and I had yet another reason to mess with it even in peace time – so once more, I am single. But, well, hey: Iron Man's still an asset to the Avengers since we actually started being a team! You're not stuck with a version of me that – without the power of a reactor – can't power an Iron Man suit, and ends up just being, like, the 'team mechanic', or something equally cheesy."

Tony looked up to discover Bruce had fallen asleep. He was okay with that, surprisingly; now, he could maybe get up the courage to tell the others (or, even better, just have JARVIS run the recording of this rendition). So he'd done what Tony Stark just didn't do: he'd bared his soul, he'd trusted one of his teammates, and he'd admitted to himself that leaning on these people probably (might be) a (maybe) good thing, after all.

… And still, within the space of three days, fate decided he needed one more screwing over.