So, this chapter's kind of a short and repetitive, but it's basically Tony trying to figure out in his own way what's happening. Basically, sorry about that. Also, I'm sorry for the spelling mistakes and other such typos in all of the chapters, but I have trouble picking up on things. I always have too - like, to the point that my teacher thought I was dyslexic in kindergarten until she found out I'd already read The Hobbit on my own. And I have an idea for a pairing-less OC story, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to have two stories that aren't canon. I would add a frowny face emoticon here, but I can never remember what works and what doesn't on this site.

Disclaimer: don't own the characters.

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Going 'Round in Circles

At first, Tony wasn't sure if he wanted to go back to school, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to stay either. It had nothing to do with academics, or stress; he felt like he was more trouble than he was worth to everyone and it was pretty obvious that out of all the people he'd come in contact with in past nine weeks, only three had the faintest idea of what to do with him. His dad, Steve, and Peggy had all been part of the war at one point or another and PTSD just came with territory. But knowing how to deal with it didn't make it any less frustrated, he imagined, and it wasn't in his nature to be okay with becoming anyone else's problem. And if he went back to school, Natasha and Clint would have to deal with him daily; but even he conceded that Boston was probably safer for him. If he stayed here, he became his parents' problem and considering that he, well, liked that they liked him, he didn't want to fuck that up.

Basically, he was stuck.

In the end, it was Natasha and Clint who convinced him, like they always seemed to be able to do because somehow the three of them just sort of got each other. So it was no surprise that the two of them opened up a video chat with him Saturday evening to let him know he was an idiot.

"Hey," he said once JARVIS connected the call, trying to make it sound as if he wasn't contemplating not coming back. "Sorry about Friday."

Natasha rolled her eyes. "Jeez, you don't have to apologize."

Yes, I do, he thought and apparently Clint could read minds because he said, "Relax, it's fine. We got you out of it, didn't we? How're you feeling, anyway?"

And because he didn't want Natasha to figure out a way to kill people through computer screens, he answered, "Better now that the meds wore off. Mom says the old psychiatrist prescribed the dose assuming I'd gain weight back, so it lasted it long that it should've."

His two friends glanced at each other before Natasha asked, "They're letting you come back, right? Like, did Erskine clear you?"

"Um," he said, trying to decide whether or not he should lie about this. "Well, they—"

"So that's a yes?" Clint said and he nodded because dammit, his friends just looked so pleased that he couldn't say no. "Awesome! What did your parents say? They're good with it too?"

"Neither of them really want me to," he said, "but they think it's a better idea because I have more people around if I need help with anything or whatever in Boston. They double checked with Rogers and Bruce and basically I have to go to therapy twice a week rather than once, and Erskine's adjusting the dosage to make sense."

He hoped that this would be the end of it, that they'd just accept the answer and he could tell his parents that he wanted to because the final decision was supposed to be his. But his luck had never been good, and Natasha was just about the only person in the world who could "read" him or whatever people called it. The saying never made much sense to him. "What about you?" she said, and she was going to make an amazing journalist once she graduated. "Are you okay with this, or is this something the adults agreed on?"

Ever since he got back, he'd grown a problem with lying that he'd never had before, and his mouth felt dry. "I've got end say," he answered. "But yeah, I want to go back."

Though Clint seemed to be perfectly fine with his response, Natasha still looked skeptical. Thankfully, she didn't say anything because Tony wasn't sure how to reply. "Good," she said, but the pause let him know that she didn't believe him in the slightest. "We want you back too, in case you're wondering. Just don't think we're willingly to leave you alone for a while."

"So I need to constantly be babysat now?"

Clint said, "Tony, don't even try to complain. You're deal with, that clear?"

"Crystal, Mr. Barton."

Again, Natasha rolled her eyes. "Oh, shut up, Tony. And we have to gone. I'm dragging him food shopping. You want anything in particular?" He shook his head. "Okay, then. See'ya."

"Bye."

They ended the chat and he flopped back with a sigh, sinking low in his chair. For the first time in he didn't even know how long, he felt unsure about his own decision. On one hand, he really did want to finish out college and figure out how to end this because it didn't seem to be getting any better. But, on the other, he knew he was inconveniencing a ton of people who didn't need it. Everyone else had enough going on with his psychological train wreck getting itself in there and he wished they'd just see this now so that he wouldn't have to deal with the fallout later on.

Tony wasn't good with disappointment.

So he decided that for now he'd go under the assumption that they weren't all going to hate him in the end, but keep it in mind so that he wouldn't be surprised when they finally did. It was inevitable that it was going to happen sooner or later. And, when he really thought about it, his parents suddenly making an active attempt to repair their relationship wasn't going to make it any easier. Maybe if he wasn't surprised it wouldn't hurt so bad and he could go back to the way it used to be because before Clint and Natasha wedged their way in, he didn't really have people in his life. He survived that fine, then, and he could do it again. Probably.

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As he laid in bed his fist night back in Boston, unable to sleep because his thoughts wouldn't slow down, he thought to himself that confusion didn't come naturally to him. Being fifteen and a freshman, this should be a feeling he dealt with all the time, and it was unfortunately become more common. Up until he graduated high school, though, he always knew exactly what he was doing and all the accompanying answers. So as he stared blankly up at the Google-selected night sky, he wondered how he was going to go about solving it, and decided to break it down the way he would any other problem.

First, he had to identify the cause. That was easy—he wasn't sure where he wanted to be, or what he wanted to do. In New York, the familiarity was definitely something of a relief, but here in Boston was considered less "dangerous" according Dr. Erskine, who was used to dealing with PTSD in soldiers by this point. The problem with Boston, though, was he had to rely on others to keep him from having a mental break down. Then again, in New York his parents would have to deal with him, and while his dad was more equipped to help him out than, say, Clint or Natasha were, the fact remained that he had to pretend not to notice how wary everyone was. So part of him wanted to go back home, but another part wanted to stay in Boston, and the largest part of him had no clue whether if he should chose one of those or figure out something else.

Second, identify possible solutions, and this was where the confusion really started because he didn't know what the solution was. Figuring out something else (preferably on his own) was his personal choice, but even he had to admit that he wasn't currently in the mental state to manage that. That, and at fifteen getting his medication on his own wasn't exactly possible. In terms of readily possible, sticking with Boston was the best option for "support" reasons, and supposedly no one minded yet. Supposedly. In New York, his parents had to work and he wouldn't have school to distract himself and lack of distraction couldn't do anything for him but make it worse.

Finally, identify all the best possible solution and elaborate upon until he reached a singular, correct answer. But that was the problem: he couldn't figure how to elaborate on any of them. Just because Boston seemed like the best choice didn't mean he was right. Support to stop anything dangerous only lasted long enough for everyone to get sick of him, and then he'd have to figure out something else. All possible solutions branched off into possible results, and no matter how he hard he tried, he couldn't find a single resolution that was anything other than a disaster. He had three years before he could legally take care of himself (the thought of emancipation at sixteen briefly crossed his mind but that was basically suicide, or at least figuratively), something that even JARVIS knew, which was why his automatic reaction was to contact someone else, usually an adult (because Natasha didn't count yet).

All of this meant that, for the first time in his life, Tony was unable to find an answer.

There was a knock on his doorframe (he still wasn't allowed to have any real privacy and it was two and a half months later) and he looked over to see Clint standing there. "Figured you'd be up," the other boy said, leaning against the wall. "Are you even trying?"

He sat up and shrugged. "Not really," he answered. "What about you?"

"Can't sleep for some reason," he said. "Thought I should check on you."

The lack of full sentences meant he was tired, and Tony wasn't sure if it was self-centered or not to wonder if it was his fault. He'd freaked them out, but of everyone he got involved, it was probably the worst for Clint. Though he still wasn't sure exactly what he happened, he knew he must've frozen up and probably talked out loud too. "You can come in if you want," he said. "Or we could play video games in your room if you're willing to risk waking Natasha."

Five minutes later, they were doing just that, with the volume turned down all the way and the lights off and how they managed to find a three bedroom apartment that wasn't a penthouse or whatever was still somewhat of a mystery. Clint told him, "My freshman lit teacher's a bitch. Like, on par with Ms. Isben, which I didn't even know was possible."

"Why?" Tony asked, distracted as he whacked into a horde of zombies. Unlike his friend, he couldn't get high scores of shooting or melee games without looking at the screen. "What she'd do? You can be as a bad as a sixty-eight-year-old Latin teacher?"

"She gets too obsessed with the technical stuff in essays rather than content," he answered. "And you know me, I'm worse at proofreading than Natasha, and her friends language isn't even English. Also, yeah, apparently it is possible to be as bad as a sixty-eight-year-old Latin teacher."

"So, what, did you fail?"

"Just got a C." Tony's mind quickly supplied that a C was the lowest grade Clint had ever gotten in any subject other than Art I sophomore year. "I mean, it's college. Aren't they supposed to grade for like what you're saying and all that? And it's not even like my mistakes are all that bad. I just fail at comma rules."

As they reached the safe house, he said, "I don't know, but I'm pretty sure everyone who isn't an English major fails at comma rules. Is she that bad in class, too?"

"She's sexist against guys," he answered. "It sucks. Doesn't matter what we say, we're always wrong about something. I point out that Hamlet's dad supposed to represent the devil, and she told me that it was supposed to be Satan, when I'm pretty sure the critical article I read in AP used both terms. She does it with the other guys too. We've just stopped talking by this point."

So far, three out of five of his teachers hated him, but that was because he slept through their classes, which gave them at least a little reason. He was used to people overreacting to his inattentiveness, even though he clearly continued getting the highest grade in all of his classes. "Told you that should've taken that AP test," Tony said, and they exited into Sugar Mill. "This level's going to suck without sound, you know that, right?"

Clint shrugged. "Whatever," he said. "But yeah, I guess I should've. Still, eighty-seven's pretty expensive and I was already taking three. And the SATs. My dad was unemployed at the point too, remember? Fucking economy."

"True, yeah." The overall conversation was random and unprompted, but he got it. Clint was like him, and sometimes avoidance was easiest to get something across. "I'm sure Tash could help you proofread, but I don't know what to tell you for the whole sexism thing. Wasn't your trig teacher like that or something?"

"Reverse," he answered, "so Natasha had to deal with this. Which I always thought was weird since Mrs. Fritz was, well, a fresh-out-college female who looked like an ultra-feminist."

"And then you had our CompSci teacher, who taught you nothing."

"Yup."

They fell silence, focusing on the game and Tony wondered if his friend was out of words the way he was. And had been for a while now, too. Still, sitting up at two in morning and playing zombie survival games while trash talking teachers both old and new made him feel almost like a normal MIT student. That was something, anyway.

It felt nice.

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Yeah...again, sorry. And sorry for apologizing so much, I tend to get like this when I'm sick.