I was originally going to save this chapter, but I figured logically it would happen sooner or later. It's a lot...darker than any of the other chapters will be except maybe the resolution if I find a way to make it so be warned in advance. I really hope it doesn't kill the story. :/ And you're going to think I'm nuts, but the final scene was inspired by a 90s sitcom.

Disclaimer: don't own the characters.

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Trigger

Tony was having one of those horrible, delusional moments again after a particularly bad incident where his mind stopped working and he started hearing a voice from home. Panic response, Yinsen called it, but he was pretty sure going insane was a better way of putting it.

"I'm fine," he was saying, trying to pretend that he didn't notice how badly he was shaking because he's got to stop acting so damn fragile. "Really, it's okay, I'm—"

"You're not—oh, shit."

The voice sounded like it was coming through static and he shut up because it was hard enough to breathe already, his anxiety growing and all that and he'd thought after this fucking long that he should be used to it by now. But he was shot twice that he remembers, and the sound of gunfire and the occupying heat that went along with it when the bullet passed about six inches from his eyes caused his already destroyed nerves to break down further. There was an arm around his waist, but except for false-Clint babbling on with, "Just calm down, you're seeing things, why's this lasting this long, you're going to be okay, Tony, I swear to God—" there wasn't much sound.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed, whether it was a moment or an hour, when he heard, "Jarvis, active the thingy," followed by an unfamiliar, "Beginning activation, Mr. Barton," and he knew he must really be gone if he was fabricating an entirely new voice. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had something to eat or drink so maybe someone drugged him again.

"C'mon, Tony, breathe, it's not real, snap out of it, you can do it, no one's going to hurt you, you're—" A sigh of relief and he was starting to feel a little dizzy now. "NATASHA! We have a problem!"

There were hurrying footstep and—Footsteps? Footsteps on wood and—and—an apartment, he was thinking of. Then there was a hand placed against his face and a half-reality came rushing in so fast that it was almost a physical force and despite himself, he screamed.

Natasha's hand retreated instantly and there's an apartment in Boston, an MIT student, his friends living with him, his parents at home, an AI with the picture of the sky for reasons like this, can't sleep worse than ever but that couldn't possibly be real because his vision was still filled with the cave and fire and he was fever level hot. PTSD, he struggled to remember, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and he hadn't had an attack since that day back at home, so this wasn't, well, impossible.

"What the fuck happened, Clint?"

"A car alarm went off and—" He forced himself to get his lungs working, to get air in and out and breathe. "—it sounded like a gunshot. We were talking and Tony just freaked."

Reality began to set fully, but it was like he was seeing double, vision fluctuating back and forth between the cave and real life, and it made him feel nauseous. "I'm here," he got out before deciding that talking and focusing was too much effort and squeezing his eyes shut, turning away, instinctive-like, and his face collided with his friend's shoulder. A second arm joined the first, and he chose to just say fuck it for once and let himself be held. At the moment, his sense of touch was what was keeping him grounded.

"Should I—" Natasha started and couldn't finish because Clint answered, "Yeah, this is a bad one."

Footsteps retreated and he concentrated on calming down his racing heartbeat because it was only making breathing harder, clinging onto the older boy's shirt because he needed to feel a certain amount of thereness to stay in the now. Then he heard water through the pipes as the sink turned on and a moment later the footsteps came back. Clint untangled him and maneuvered his body so he was facing forward, at eye level with his friend. And Natasha, who he'd always thought was incredibly hot, looked absolutely beautiful because those bright green eyes of hers proved that yeah, he was here, and here was real.

Unfortunately, there was a cup of water in one hand and his fast-acting anxiety meds in the other, and it put him immediately on the defensive. "No way," he said, shaking his head, and any pills other than Advil unnerved him in ways what he couldn't explain. "I'm okay now, I'm back, see? I don't need them."

He knew that he said something wrong almost before he finished because their looks of relief were killed instantly. Maybe it was just because he was recovering from the worst flashback he'd had so far, or maybe it was because he was so damn scared of any and all anger directed to him, but he froze up and retreated inside of himself real quick.

"Would you like me to contact Mr. Stark's parents, Miss Romanoff?" JARVIS asked, which caused the panic start to build again.

Before either could answer, he said, "NO!" perhaps a little louder than he meant to. Forcing himself to quiet a little, he continued, "Please don't, they'll—Mom and Dad worry about me already and I can—I'll take the medication!"

"Obviously they have reason," Natasha said, voice overlapping Clint's, "Then fucking say it, Tony."

How pissed off he sounded freaked out Tony more than he'd like to admit and he shot off the bed so fast that he felt stupid. Natasha grabbed him with an indignant yell of, "Clint!" water sloshing to the floor, and the fact that he was hyperventilating forced even him to concede that, yeah, the flashback had turned into an anxiety attack that probably wouldn't go away any time soon.

"Jesus," said Clint, and the lack of a squeeze on his shoulder or anything simple and not touchy-feely or even touchy at all spoke volumes of how serious this really was, "I'm so sorry. I just—neither of us is going to do anything, I promise."

He didn't answer and somehow Natasha got him to sit down again, pushing the pills and water into his hand. He swallowed them down without complaint because this wasn't battle he was capable of fighting, stubborn as hell or not.

"His parents, Miss Romanoff?"

"Admit it," she said, firm but not angry which he appreciates. "Admit it and I'll say no."

It took him half a second, which was slow by his standards, to realize what she meant and because he saw himself as a high velocity object about to crash and burn against an impenetrable, unmovable wall, he answered, "I'm not okay. I've got PTSD and can't even deal with a car alarm, so all logic says I failed pretty bad and am totally fucked."

This seemed to placate both of them (for now, he had a feeling), and Natasha said, "Not his parents, JARVIS. But we have to get an adult on the phone."

"I suggest…His recent contacts include a Bruce Banner, Dr. Erskine, Peggy Rogers, and Steve Rodgers. Further, he has the names—"

"Steve Rogers," Clint said. "Can you get him on Tony's phone, not on speaker?"

"Of course."

Weren't the things he designed supposed to be on his side? Apparently not, but he was so drained at the moment that he couldn't find it in him to be irritated. As his phone started ringing, Natasha sat down next to him and Clint grabbed it off his bed and disappeared from the room, door closed behind him.

"You'll start to calm down in about five to ten minutes," she said. "It'll make you really tired."

"I know," he answered, and already felt exhausted. The mental strain it caused turned out to be difficult to manage. "You're going to call my parents eventually, aren't you?"

"We'll see what Steve says," she said, that unreadable expression of her back up. "Do you want to lie down?"

Though he really did want to, he shook his head. "MIT is easy, but I really like it," he said, feeling vulnerable and useless and just so utterly afraid. "My parents might pull me out if they find out it was worse than an anxiety attack and I don't want that."

"You're fifteen, you can deal with waiting until the spring semester or next year." She had a point, but he'd always been great at ignoring what was good for him, usually doing the complete opposite, and a mental disorder and a ton of impossible-to-recover-from injuries evidently didn't have the ability to change that. "I know you don't want to hear it, but this might not've been such a great idea. What if you'd been in school, Tony? What then?"

He shrugged, not wanting to think about it, and Clint reentered, taking a seat on the other side of him. He looked pale and worried and not at all like his usual mischievous self. Maybe this really was a bad idea, he thought. Living with an insane person (because right now he honestly did feel nuts) probably wasn't easy to deal with on top of homework and classes.

"He didn't have work," he told them, "so he it'll only be a few minutes. Tony, I got to say, you probably aren't going to like this."

After he didn't answer in a reasonable time slot, Natasha said, "He knows. We just talked about it."

Somehow they realized that since the meds hadn't kicked in yet, he was still inwardly whacked out and she started telling him about her day and then Clint joined in and he stayed quiet, listening. It helped, and he quickly found himself getting tired. Before he could crash though, there was a knock on the front door, and Natasha got up to answer it. A few seconds later she was back, following a very worried looking Steve. She gave a flick of her head that he was probably supposed to miss, his other friend stood up, and they exited. Steve took his place on the bed.

"Clint told me you had an episode," he said and Tony nodded, "because a car alarm sounded like a gunshot."

Oh, yeah, that was what triggered it. Apparently fireworks weren't the only thing that could remind an unstable, ex-hostage kid of a mock execution or bullet to…well, everywhere, at the end. Steve continued, "I'm not sure if he told you, but you were stuck in that state of for almost four minutes."

In flashback terms (or at least for him), four minutes was a long time, or at least for one that strong. Not that it was saying much, since he'd only had three by this point. "I scared them pretty bad, didn't I?" he asked.

"Yeah," Steve answered. "Yeah, you did. You took the anti-anxiety, right?" Again, he nodded. "You'll probably fall asleep soon. I'll be right outside when you do, bedroom door open just in case."

And since this was Steve Rogers, and man he'd know quite literally since he was born, it was shockingly easy to admit, "This counts as crazy, doesn't it? I feel like I am, anyway."

"Aw, don't be like that," the man said, Brooklyn accent getting stronger, which meant he was more worried than he was trying to show. "You aren't crazy. Traumatized, yes, but you're still Tony Stark. Everyone'd be more worried if you didn't have flashbacks."

Then without cause, he suddenly really, really wanted to see his dad and why, he didn't know. Or no, he did, it was because—he'd never been there before, but he found him and saw him at his absolute worse, and was officially the only person who knew exactly what was did, and exactly what was done to him, though Steve might too, because it was pretty damn obvious; but his dad saw all the medical records and woke him up from his first flashback and that had to mean something. So when Steve said, "I have to call your father, you know, that right?" he couldn't find it in him to argue anymore.

Unfortunately, before he could tell him this, the drowsiness side effect hit his brain, become too strong to handle, and he passed out.

.

True to his word, Steve stayed the entire time, and apparently called his parents, because from not far outside his door he could hear the murmur of four voices. His dad then, but Boston was five hours from New York, so how long he was out was a mystery. He sat up, ignoring the lightheaded feeling that came as a side effect of the anti-anxiety medication and clicked the button on his cell phone. 11:01, it read, which meant a total ten hours. Considering that he was normally lucky if he got three hours of sleep (or lately, any at all), he felt more exhausted than he did rested.

After putting his phone in his pocket, he stood up and got himself out of the room, narrowly avoiding tripping over a spinny chair and before this mess he was anything but a klutz. He slipped through the halfway opened door and found his dad, Steve, Natasha, and Clint gathered around the small round table in the kitchen/living room area the last renters left for some reason. And the apartment's floors were made of wood rather than tile or carpet and creak when he walked, alerting the attention of everyone in the room.

"How're you feeling?" his dad asked as he sat down in a fifth chair they obviously pulled from Clint's room.

He answered, "Better," rather than "Fine" because Natasha was giving him a look that read If you so much as say that word, I will make you miserable. And since he felt so utterly pissed off at himself for worrying everyone, dragging Steve into this and accidently pulling his dad from what was probably an important meeting or midway through inventing something, he found himself adding, "Sorry."

For a moment, no one said anything, just started at him incredulously. Then Clint said, "Well, fuck," and slouched back into his chair like Tony was supposed to understand what that meant.

Something was wrong with that he said, apparently, because Natasha looked exasperated, Steve worried, Clint weary, and his dad was pinching the bridge of the nose. So to make it worse, he was the cause of a headache too.

"I think you should come home," his dad said with a sigh. "At least for the weekend. I spoke to Abraham, and he told me that having you back in New York for a few days might help you feel better."

He bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from asking whether or not he'd be allowed to come back, because he had a feeling this was going to be conditional again. "Okay," he answered, not having it in him to protest yet. "I don't have class on Monday, or tomorrow."

"Do you think you'll be able to go back to sleep, Tony?" He shook his head, honest, because those ten hours was probably all he was going to need for the week, if not more. "Should we leave now or tomorrow? It's up to you."

Since he was embarrassed by what happened, and really didn't like the way everyone was looking at him, he said, "Can we just go now?"

"Sure," his dad answered with a half-smile he'd never seen until two months earlier. "Let's go, I'm parked down the street."

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Being home, surprisingly, really did make him feel better and he knew with a shocking amount of clarity that, yeah, maybe going off to college right away wasn't such a good idea. The morning after, he joined his dad in the lab because he understood now that simply dropping work wasn't easy, and he knew from experience that the easiest way for a Stark to relieve stress was to sketch out designs on graph paper until something looked right. And he hated himself pretty bad now for causing the twenty-one pieces of crumbled up ideas scattered on and around the table.

His dad looked up when he came in and pushed a few papers off the table so he could sit down. Neither of them used chairs much, a similarity he hadn't noticed until recently.

He took a seat and his dad put down the pencil, hopping up next to him and honest to God, Tony wished that they were always like this. Maybe then none of this would've happened. But he killed that train of thought because what ifs were never his strong point and all they ever did was make his anxiety worse.

"I'm not allowed back, am I?" he asked, because even if it was just Saturday, this needed to be addressed.

After a moment of noticeable hesitation, his dad answered, "I don't know, Tony. Your mom's really against it, and honestly both of us are scared of what will happen if you're in school when this happens, but I have to admit that you have more support there. I mean, yesterday proved that Clint and Natasha could snap you out of it, and they were able to get Steve and Abraham on the phone immediately."

"And if I'm here, you two have to go back to work eventually."

His sighed. "Unfortunately," he said. "At the same time, though, I feel like Boston isn't helping you recover. It's unfamil—what did I say?"

There was a very clear edge of panic in his voice and maybe Tony was just being selfish because it was getting pretty obvious that he was shooting everyone's nerves to hell. None of them deserved it, just like no one deserved to die for someone like him either because after screwing up so bad he was the one who should have to deal with retribution. Worrying over him was pointless because he was the catalyst to getting himself into the hostage situation. Somehow.

And it was just that….Nights were hard, and the medication must have some paradoxical effect because all his mind could think up as he lay in bed, awake, was what they said to him, and that it was probably exaggerated but there had to be some truth behind it anyway. Flashbacks and panic attacks and the explosion of always-present survivor's guilt didn't help either.

"I—I," he said, tripping over his own words again before he managed to compose himself a little, remind his natural instincts that crying was not okay. Then he fixed the feeling with, "You aren't going to commit me or anything, right? Because—Well, because I know I'm not really right by now, but I'm that bad you have to—"

His dad's eyes were wide with shock. "Committed?" he repeated. "God, Tony, you're struggling, but it's not severe enough. You're probably the only person in the world that I can't see that helping."

It took him a moment because of his own surprise, but Tony figured out what he meant, that his ability to create things like the ARC reactor and cope by keeping his mind working at his normal pace, a blessing and a curse, was keeping him sane in a way that walls of "comforting" colors and the hovering of staff and fuck knew that else never could. His dad got off the table and stood in front of him, analyzing in the same way he did. And he might hate physical contact, and after how much he'd been dealing with it over the past nine weeks logically should've made him avoid it more than ever, he found himself reaching out towards his dad and when he hugged him back, Tony felt a frightening amount of relief.

To make it worse, his eyes hurt like they hadn't since he woke up screaming to having his arm cut open without anesthetic so Yinsen could remove a mildly electrified wire that somehow got stuck under his skin. So he broke down completely against his dad's shoulder, feeling pathetic and useless, because the area hurt again as he was flooded with not-quite-flashback memories of getting stitched up with a badly cleaned needle and string torn from a shirt before he was bandaged with a cloth covered with a three week old oil strain and blood from God knew when. Break the kid first had been the obvious logic, because a fifteen-year-old boy was easier, and sometimes it stilled amazed him was through all of that, he only spilled something once and it was badly fabricated bullshit that was figured out within two days. After a while, he had a feeling that it was out of spite.

"Y-you love me, r-right?" he said, surprised because he didn't think like this, let alone talk like it, and feeling vaguely ashamed but knowing that he needed reassurance that he wasn't a total screw up. The crying made him stutter. "T-this isn't ju-just 'cause you feel b-bad, right?"

"No, Tony," his dad answered, rubbing circles on his back, forcibly reminding him that yeah, he really was just some kid. "I love you, and your mom does too. You're safe now, we're not going to let anything happen to you again. And we're going to figure out what's best for you—all of us. You're the best son anyone could ever ask for."

Entered the stray, ration thoughts of, No I'm not, and Then why didn't you say it until now? But he didn't voice either of these and instead squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stop this stupid, useless, pointless mental break. "O-okay," he said. "I l-love you too, Dad. You know tha-that, right?"

"Yeah," his dad said, "yeah, I do," and added, "Are you tired? Or hungry?"

He shook his head. "C-can we just w-work on something? I don't w-want to th-think about it."

"Okay." He had a feeling his dad was thinking, That's dangerous, and was profoundly glad that he didn't comment on it. "We'll figure something out."

In end, they worked on possible ways to make cars fly, silly as it was, and Tony discovered that the two of them had a similar sense of humor, because within the hour, his dad figured out how to make him laugh.

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I wrote this way too fast for the word count to be possible.