I've been in this writing-deprived funk for some time now. This chapter was inspired by the song "Violin" by: Amos Lee. It really is a great piece. I listened to it while writing this and I'd prefer you listen to it while reading it. :)
"What do you want, Virginia? What is it that I can't provide you for you, make you, love you, touch you, feel you?" The words left shakily, dragging themselves out of his tired throat and chest until they hung in the air like awkward red and gold balloons. Grease and sweat dripped from the mangled strands of jet black plastered to each side of his face with the glassy brown pools that pleaded with her across the room, standing rigid against the wall opposite of their bed.
"Its gotten to you." Her words left her crackled lips as unsure as his and joined the group gathering in between them. She, being his lovely Pepper, was naked. They were making love snuggled under wrinkled sheets of habit and linen smells only moments before she pushed him off of her in frustrated discontent. She had started to cry, and it showed itself in tracks of mascara leading down her freckled cheeks. He was clueless to the need boiling.
He kept his lips sealed together and refused to let them ask what she meant by 'it' getting to him. Part of him already knew who it was and what it was doing to him. He stopped eating. He stopped sleeping. His mind was always calculating, making improvements, or chastising every minute of every day, keeping his scarred skin from feeling the slightest breeze from the winter air outside or the familiar sounds of unburdened children running about on the sidewalks. "You're a murderer." It would whisper convincingly in the silence of the night. "I'm making things right," he would argue. "I'm doing what's right." But it wouldn't untie the tension-building depression taking hold of his soul.
"It is me." he retorted quietly when the sound of her fading padding footsteps to the bathroom reached his ears.
"No. Iron Man is not you. You made him. You own him. And now- - " she trailed off when something clattered and fell to the cold tile. "- -he owns you. You are it."
The words stung. They stung like hell. And why? Because they were truth. They were the very thing he'd refused and resisted to believe after the many urges that would overcome him several times during his hectic days. It had become very much like a drug to him, an addiction to the power and strength he could only show when in it. He began to notice how his touch no longer exhibited human affection. It was emotionless and void of love he used to live for. For her. She began to notice too. He was always absent with her now, as if he was on the phone with someone else whenever she tried to desperately awaken his senses. He no longer felt the things he longed to feel. He only felt pain and anger. Exhaustion and the next mission. There was nothing else. There was no room for anything else. There was no room for Pepper. And that scared him the most. She deserved someone better.
The moving around of bottles and other scattering essentials, shaking hands, and crushing realizations filled the entire bedroom, popping the invisible balloons in the process. He couldn't take it anymore. He broke. His hands landed themselves on his scrunched face. Tears began to fall in long, saddened strides until they traveled down his chin and dripped onto the shaggy carpet cushioning the bare toes buried there. His shoulders slumped. His knees gave out. He fell.
The last string of hope he'd been clinging to was now packing in the next room, planning to leave. There Tony lay. Nude. Inside and out.
Did you catch the first Iron Man movie line I slipped in there? You may have to squint. Anyway. Too raw? Review, please. As usual.