As my first story, the tone will probably make you think I'm a hyper depressed person, but I can assure you, I'm a very happy narcissist with plans to lighten the tone as we move along.
Rebooted
Chapter 1: startup
The incident was 2 years ago, and Tony Stark remained locked inside the Armory as if it had happened yesterday. The Mark 2 armor was on constant standby for the times he had actually rested after his daily 19 hour patrol. His life plans were replaced by his Iron Man missions; his withheld application to MIT left sitting inside a mountain of garbage. Armor parts were scattered throughout his lab; suits of armor that had not used in the previous 2 years were dismantled haphazardly or simply thrown in a melting pit.
The room now reeked of loneliness and regret, only outdone by the stench emanating from the lost billionaire who had stopped bothering with hygiene some time last year. Rhodey and Happy had long ceased to attempt comforting the genius, and not even Howard Stark could penetrate the mental wall that his son had put up; all he had been able to do for the boy was send him clean clothes and groceries every 2-3 weeks, as the odd time that Tony had decided to change clothes lead to throwing his other outfit in the garbage heap.
Tony was broken.
Looking in the mirror reminded him of how much she would have disapproved of his current appearance. She would hate this, he thought as he looked at his now thickly bearded face. The thought almost made him smile before new tears started flowing down his cheeks, running over the blanket of previous dried ones that he had left untended.
Why?
It was not a new thing for him to ask himself, especially after finding an old photo that got thrown under his workbench at some point. The picture was of a couple practically drowning in their happiness... happiness... an emotion long forgotten by the shadow of the once smug, prideful man in the photo. He looked at the picture with true regret; if he could have said the words before everything went to shit, even just once... that would have been enough.
"I need you," he whispered, as if the hushed words could somehow reach their target.
xXxXx
Regardless of how hard he tried to focus on upgrading his armor, all it reminded him of was the time it failed him when he needed it most. He began tearing up at the thought of what the failure had cost him. Had he the time to fix the critical error, he might have been living happily.
Thinking about it made it that much easier to cry himself to sleep.
xXxXx
Clunk! Clunk! Clunk!
He approached the heavy metal door with little more than a snail's pace without caring to put the armor back into its pod.
"Go away," the inventor croaked. All he had wanted was some peace and quiet, even though he knew whoever it was wouldn't just leave him be. When he got to the door to look through the peephole he had installed he had seen no one on the other side. He turned on his heel to head back to-
Clunk! Clunk! Clunk!
Tony walked back to the door, unlocked it and had opened his mouth to tell the person off, but who he saw nearly made his heart stop.
"P-pe-p-pe..."
"Did you forget again?" She asked, with a frown growing on her face when the boy stood still and made no visible effort to respond.
"This is the third time this week! First we rescheduled on Tuesday, then yesterday, now today? Did you go out on a mission without me? Who was it? Not that there's many super-criminals left, I mean. Was it someone new? Should you-"
She trailed off mid question when she realized his posture remained frozen.
"Tony?"
After Tony finally took a teary eyed blink, the redhead was no longer there. The broken hero then began to sob when he realized it was yet another hallucination.
I realize that this may not be the most well written, but I just really wanted to get a storyline I came up with out of my head. I hope you can put up with my writing abilities enough that you can enjoy reading the coming chapters :)
Also, as you may have noticed, I have updated this chapter several times after initially publishing it in order to make everything seem more accurate to the characters we know and love.
Chapter 2: critical error should be released by Sunday, then updated at somewhere around 10 times before the week is finished.