SMASH!
A bottle of scotch slammed into the far wall of the lab and shattered into pieces, scattering on the floor. Funny… that was just like his life. Everything seemed to be fine until he reached a certain point then SMASH! It shattered.
His father, a man Tony had loved and tried to make proud throughout his life had hated him, preferring instead to search for his beloved Captain America! A man who had been missing and presumed dead for years was more important to his father than his own son. Who was almost as smart as his father, building circuit boards, making robots, just striving to get even a simple 'that's nice' from his ever distant father. And that man had died taking his mother with him and leaving Tony alone.
SMASH!
Lab equipment went flying off of the table where Tony had been working just an hour ago before he had found the scotch bottle. He really didn't know why he was doing this to himself again, drinking himself into a state where his mind started arguing with him. He knew it made him sound crazy but that's the only thing he could call this. He knew that he shouldn't torture himself with all of his failures and betrayals but his brain just went over and over all of the names to try and remind him of why he keeps distancing himself from others with his sarcasm, arrogance, self-absorbency, and nicknames.
Obadiah! That man had been more of a father to him than his real one; Obi was always there for the important things like each milestone in Tony's crappy life. He had Tony kidnapped and if his kidnappers hadn't wanted him to build them a missile he would be dead and his good 'friend' and mentor would be in control of the company and continue to sell to both sides. Then When Obi stole his arc reactor and almost ended up killing Pepper. Tony couldn't believe how badly he had messed up on the whole Obadiah business. But what really killed him was actually killing Obi who he really had loved as a father. That just proved to him that he really just couldn't have a real father like almost everyone else in the world.
SMASH!
He had resorted to knocking over the cabinets along the walls now in his anger. He knew where his mind would take him next, to the people he really cared about and how their deaths had made him just want to curl up and die. But no he was Tony Stark and as the public knew he couldn't do that. Because Tony Stark didn't care about people, he only cared about himself. He was the Merchant of Death and also the invincible Iron man. He was a sarcastic egotistical bastard who the world thought they knew everything about. Well they were wrong he wasn't that bad he just hid behind a careful mask that he had been building ever since his childhood. That mask protected him from getting hurt when people left him and they always did leave sooner or later.
Yinsen. The man who had been his savior, teacher, and friend. Tony didn't have many friends not real ones and sure the Avengers were getting to the point of the 'friend' status but Yinsen really got him. The only person who had come that close to fully understanding his was Bruce. Yinsen asked one thing of him, that he not waste his life, and he had. God knows that he tried so god damned hard to just be useful and to help people. He destroyed most of his weapons that had been sold to the wrong people. But when he found out that the arc reactor was killing him what did he do? He drank and partied and hurt so many people.
SMASH!
At this point Tony had taken to putting on the gauntlets of his Iron man suit and blasting numerous things in his lab inside of Stark Tower, or as they had now started calling it the Avengers tower. There was only one more death that his mind was going to go over now, even though there had been more…
Coulson. Phil 'Agent' Coulson who had been there since the beginning of the Iron man suit. Well not really but it felt like it. They argued and teased each other and even though they totally denied it were close friends. They bantered and enjoyed they time they spent together be it when Coulson was being his baby sitter for Fury the Space Pirate or just when he would come over and they might share the occasional beer whenever Coulson could convince Tony to drink something like that. Hearing Fury confirm that Coulson was dead had been like getting thrown through a building by the Hulk and then having Thor blast him apart with his stupid hammer. But when he found out about Phil's trading cards Tony had been furious. Eventually leaving the room cursing Fury because Phil had once told him about those cards and how unless it was burning down or he was getting them signed they were always sitting in his locker on the helicarrier. Fury had ruined one of his most prized possessions to get them to work together. Well if Coulson had been alive they would have but he was dead and he had left Tony all alone.
He wondered why no one had come running down to his lab to see what the hell he had ruined or blown up this time. Maybe they had left him too, but he couldn't imagine them leaving anytime soon. Bruce and Clint had become fast friends with him, bonding over mutual interests. Natasha would stay with Clint, and Thor liked Tony well enough whenever he was actually on Earth and not with Jane. Steve seemed determined to stick around Howard's son just to see if one day Tony really would turn into the son of the man he had once known.
Strangely enough Tony's thoughts turned to Loki next. They really had so much in common; they both had daddy issues, and felt abandoned by their families. Both had a life changing experience be it three months in a cave or learning that you were adopted and actually were one of the monsters you had grown up learning to hate. They both had similar personalities and everything. If Tony had gone down a different path he could have been the villain. If he had teamed up with Loki then they just might have been impossible to defeat. With Tony's genius and technological skills and Loki's genius and magic they could have been the greatest pair of super villains that the world…heck even that the whole universe and any beyond it had ever seen. He reminded himself to ask Thor if there was any way to bring Loki back to Earth again, though the Space Pirate would be pissed with him for that request and so might the rest of the Avengers.
Now he really wondered what would happen to him when the others found him. Would they think that he was attacked and that the attackers had destroyed the place? Or would they think he had gone on another drunken rampage? Which hey, he had gone on less of those since falling from space! But that was the point where he had passed out, slowly sinking back against the front of his work desk. And having seen that he had finished his rage filed attack on his poor lab Jarvis had come back online a few minutes before and was now comforting him. Tony passed out knowing that his robots had surrounded him and were trying to comfort him as he slipped away. Finally passing out completely after telling Dummy, who had come over and laid his arm down on Tony's chest in a comforting manner, "Good boy!"
That was how the Avengers and Pepper found them the next morning when Tony didn't come up for coffee in the morning. Tony passed out against his desk His robots around him and Dummy laying like a dog across him. The rest of the lad in utter chaos around them. When they asked Jarvis he replayed the events of the night before in a hologram for them. Then they all sighed and came to a mutual agreement without even having a conversation. They all sat down in a group and silently waited for Tony to wake up.
AN-
Ok sorry for the ending that was kind of lame. Anyway this has been going through my head for the past couple of weeks and I just had to put it down. One thing I keep thinking about is that Tony and Loki really would be the coolest and undefeatable pair of super villains ever. If enough people want me to I can expand on this but for now I think it's done. Let me know what you think!
-Luna Dare