A/N: Ordinarily, you'd all be losing me to the Olympic Fortnight, but... nope! And, also... we've been missing Tony's therapy sessions, right? Right. Onward. (Dr. Knutz... was happily borrowed from Meg Cabot.)

Various days post The Battle of Liepzig/Halle Airport...

"So can you tell me about your relationship with your parents?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because that's none of your business and I don't talk about-"

"You are here to work things out, Mr. Stark. Getting defensive only wastes my time and yours. Would you like to talk about horses instead?"

"Yes."

"Maybe later, then. Now... tell me about your parents."

Tony was really starting to wonder if maybe he shouldn't have stayed in Siberia instead. At least there, Elley only made fun of him when he did or said something dumb. "I wasn't being defensive, I just don't want to talk about them."

"And why is that?"

Doctor Knutz held up a hand, and Tony stopped talking. "Back up a little. The first conversation you had with this man involved asking him if he'd been doing pilates?"

Tony looked away. "I was trying to break the tension."

"There was tension?"

"Have you met Captain America, Doc? The guy exudes tension. Right then, I was uncomfortable, and I babble."

"To a man who was fresh out of suspended animation, who was fresh from the second world war, who-"

Tony winced. "All right. I get it. It was a bad opening line."

Doctor Knutz frowned at his wording. "Do you make a habit of thinking of everything you say as if you're on a stage performing?"

"Not usually."

The doctor looked down at his notepad. "You were uncomfortable in his presence from the start. Why?"

"I don't want to discuss that, doc."

"Ah, so this is about your mother or your father, again..."

"Doc..."

The doctor smiled for a moment, leaned forward. "You know, a friend of mine had this magnificent stallion that just couldn't get on with all the other horses, and had to be kept in a separate paddock. Only it turned out that the Stallion had been mistreated early on in life and was in reality touch-starved. You know how they found that out?"

Tony shook his head. "No. How did they?"

"Carrots."

"Huh?"

"Their daughter befriended the stallion with carrots. Pretty soon, the stallion was following her around everywhere when he wasn't locked in his stall. Darnest thing they ever saw, this large stallion following their ten year old around."

"And that has what to do with me?"

Doctor Knutz smiled. "That's for you to think about, Mr. Stark. Plus, it's a good story."

"Could we maybe talk about the horses more often instead?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Doctor Knutz smiled again. "If everything was as simple as telling you horse stories, why would you be coming to therapy? I could just hand you the wonderful historical novel on Seabiscuit and send you on your way."

"There's a book?"

"Yes, and I'd like you to read it before your next appointment."

The doctor watched him as he sat down. "So how was the book?"

"Not bad..."

"Oh?"

Tony nodded. "Was the point of it to provide a kind of perspective on the school of hard knocks?"

"Partly. And also because your friend the Captain came of age during the Depression."

Tony paused, wondering why he'd needed this psychiatrist to point that out. "Oh."

"Perspective is important, Mr. Stark."

"Everybody keeps saying that."

"Good. Remember that. So... how is your relationship with Miss Potts?"

Tony sighed. This was going to be a long, long session...

"So to put this in perspective, you asked point-blank if someone knew something, they admitted they did, but not anything else, and you..."

Tony winced. "When you put it like that, I don't know. I've been running it over and over in my mind, wondering what I'd have done if he had said no. Would I have done what I did the same way?"

Doctor Knutz sighed. "We'll never know the answer that, Mr. Stark. What ifs and could have beens are not my forte."

"But you have all the answers, right?"

"No. My job is to guide you on your journey to mental and emotional wellness. That doesn't mean I have all the answers. I have ideas. It's not the same thing."

"Can we pretend it is? Because I don't want to find the answers by myself."

"You're not. You are here with me, and we are finding them together. And even the stallion needed a guide out of the darkness of loneliness."

Tony looked at him funny. "I'm not lonely."

"Oh?"

"I'm not, Doc."

"But you were."

"You're frustrating, you know that?"

"You think this is bad? Try me when I'm at home with my kids."

"You have kids?"

"Three, and one of them has a piano recital tomorrow. Which doesn't get you out of explaining your emotional response to that video, by the way."

"Doc?"

"Hmmm?"

"I... really don't want to talk about it."

"It's why you're here with me, yes?"

"I guess?"

"Then eventually you will..."

It had taken five sessions for Tony to figure out the horse-story metaphors, and two to discover that just breaking down and actually talking about the problem at hand felt better than avoiding it completely. He still didn't like it, but maybe liking the conversations had with this horse-loving therapist wasn't the point of all this. Maybe...