Author's Note- This is set to the lyrics of "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath. I LOVE THAT SONG. So then I was listening to it and got this really great idea and this here happened. This can be viewed as a sequel to "Broken" if you want. Or not. I don't really care. I should warn you that this whole idea made a lot more sense in my head, so if it's a bit ambiguous here, I apologize.
I don't own these lyrics or these characters or anything you recognize.
Has he lost his mind?
Is he dead or is he blind?
Can he walk at all,
Or if he moves will he fall?
Tony isn't sure if he's going insane or not. Things are pleasantly hazy. Pleasant is relative- he's unable to walk more then five steps without stumbling or tripping, but hey, the stuff he's drinking isn't cheap, and so what if he ends up on the floor because of it? Sometimes, when he's so drunk he can't see straight, he lies on the floor and talks incessantly about everything and nothing. At one point, he feels like he's dying, and Pepper comes in and finds him rambling in the third person as if he's eulogizing himself. She takes this as a sign that he's drinking to kill himself, but Tony would disagree, were he physically able to.
He's drinking to reach the point where reality and fantasy blur, and he gets to see Bruce again.
"Jarvis," he begins, "how many days has it been?" His voice is horse and slurred.
"I don't think that hearing this is a good idea, sir. Last time I informed you of the length of time that had elapsed since Dr. Banner's departure, you drank an entire bottle of vodka in seven minutes before-"
"Jarvis, I want the number."
When Jarvis finally tells him, he ends up smashing his fist against the floor, which doesn't hurt him at all but will leave a hole in the expensive wood, one that will cost thousands to fix, one that Tony will, in a more poetic moment, think resembles the hole left in his heart.
In a last, lucid thought before passing out, he wonders if Bruce-as-Hulk could possibly hurt him the way Bruce leaving has done.
Is he alive or dead?
Has he thoughts within his head?
We'll just pass him there
Why should we even care?
Pepper, fed up, calls Clint and Steve and Natasha, in some sort of attempt to put a stop to his self-destruction. Clint is mostly silent, mouth set. Steve lectures. Natasha is quiet but firm. He ignores them all, makes flippant, glib comments, tries to act as if nothing's wrong.
Later, he'll have a screaming match with Pepper that will start with him claiming he doesn't need an intervention. It will end when she quits and he yells that he was about to fire her anyway. Watching her walk out, he realizes that this is the difference between Pepper and Bruce. He doesn't feel much of anything when she walks out, but he's willing to drink himself into a coma because Bruce is gone.
Eventually (after Tony has completely lost track of his sense of time), Nick Fury shows up, at the worst possible moment, the time of day when Tony has just regained consciousness and is nursing a hangover of the worst kind. Fury tells him he's making a "stupidass decision", and Tony ends up yelling at him too, before demanding to know where Bruce is. Fury tells him it's not his place to know, but his look says otherwise, and despite the pounding headache, Tony is able to realize what it all means: Even Nick Fury doesn't know where Bruce Banner is.
And if S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't know, how the hell is anyone gonna know, and this is the point where Tony gives up.
He was turned to steel
In the great magnetic field
When he travelled time
For the future of mankind
Days weeks months years he isn't sure how long later but it feels like eternity, he sees something on TV, something about the battle with the Chitauri and Loki, the time Bruce-as-Hulk pulled him out of the sky as he fell from space. The glory days. The time of the Avengers.
He supposes he quit the Avengers Initiative when he yelled at Fury, but he can never be sure. It's not like he'd be up for saving the world now anyway, not when he can't save himself, not when he can't be bothered to shower or shave or change clothes or eat real food for days on end.
There might (might very possibly) be a part of his brain that wants that feeling of doing something, something good and real, again, but it's hidden beneath the layers of pain and angst that he's surrounded in now.
Nobody wants him
He just stares at the wall
Planning his vengeance
That he will soon unfurl
There are periods in which he's catatonic, but he wouldn't call it that, and periods where he's just plain angry, although he can't begin to identify where the anger belongs. The liquor sates some of his urges, the destructive ones, but not all of them. Though Pepper is gone, he's still in charge, somehow, of his company, even when he stops going to meetings, even when he's drunk more often then not, even when he comes up with a new, awful, wonderful plan.
He's going to create a crisis.
Because the Avengers will come, he knows that. They'll be called in to respond and fix and whatever else they do, the three of them now, now that Bruce is gone and Thor is back on another fucking planet and he, Tony, is broken nearly to the point of no return.
He has the ability to create whatever he wants, but he knows it has to be big. Big enough that they'll need a Hulk, that they'll track Bruce down somehow, that he'll come back and Tony can have him again. It's not a flawless plan, not even a good one, Jarvis tells him so frequently, but he stops listening and begins to work on the details.
Guilt should weigh on him more heavily than it does, but he's Tony Stark and he's pretty sure that he's not only vain enough to get whatever the hell he wants and deserves and that's Bruce Banner, but also that he's so irredeemable that one more act of evil, even if it's only towards himself (is this evil, hurting himself so he can find the person he loves? He loves Bruce, will that cancel out the evil?) can't possibly hurt. Then he realizes how much he sounds like Natasha and her gushing red dripping red ledger that she wants to fix, and it turns him catatonic again, the thought of blood on his hands, his own blood.
Now the time is here
For Iron Man to spread fear
Vengeance from the grave
Kills the people he once saved
He's an idiot, if that's the word, but fuck it fuck it fuck it, he needs Bruce.
The day comes, and he puts on the suit again, the newest suit, the one that Bruce helped him design, the one that they nearly never finished because Tony couldn't keep his hands off Bruce, and he directs Jarvis on what to do, and is secretly thankful Jarvis can use logic but has no conscience.
Despite the suit, he knows he's suicidal, and he's glad for that. He takes one final flight, once, twice, around the city, and he returns to the lab and takes the suit off for maybe the last time and goes to the lab and takes out the chemicals and there's a moment of pure unadulterated silence before the lab on the 50th floor of Stark Tower explodes.
Nobody wants him
They just turn their heads
Nobody helps him
Now he has his revenge
And there are screams and cries (and he realizes they're coming from him) and fire and hot heat smoke rising above ash and regardless of the burn of the metal on his bare skin (he wants to feel every agonizing minute of this) he is alive is he well he is free and he tries to take off from the wreckage and nothing matters when he can't he doesn't care doesn't give a fuck as the flames lick at him…
Heavy boots of lead
Fills his victims full of dread
Running as fast as they can
Iron Man lives again.
His eyes refuse to open. There are words, and they seem to come from above him, "arc reactor" and "radiation" and "urgent" and there are familiar voices Natasha Clint Steve and he hears Bruce and that is what he needs so he just lets it wash over him as he falls away from reality once more.
Someone in the background is talking quietly, fragments of conversation.
"Are you sure…"
"I know the arc reactor, I know how it works."
"The radiation won't…"
"I doubt more radiation can hurt me."
And then hands are touching him and his chest and the arc reactor and someone was saying something to him someone familiar.
"Tony."
He opens his eyes enough to confirm.
"I can't believe you're not dead."
Bruce.
"You should be dead. The blast and the nuclear material should have killed you. Unless that's what you wanted?"
Tony can in his delirious mind see the expression on Bruce's face and he tries to open his mouth to say something but it doesn't work.
"You didn't hurt anyone else. But they called in Clint and Natasha and Steve to find me. " He wants know where Bruce was but he can't think right now, all he can think of is how he's certain that Bruce is running his fingers through his hair right now, those dark curls Tony loves so much.
Bandaged, he can barely feel but he can feel it when Bruce takes his hand and he feels it when Bruce's lips brush his forehead and rest at his ear and whisper.
"I love you." And if he's not going to die, he's going to be with Bruce and so he tells himself it was worth it to be stupid and selfish if it gets him one minute five minutes an hour any amount of time more time with Bruce.
And that he thinks, is love.