Written for the following AvengersKink prompt:
"Tony betrayed, Team Angst, Attempted suicide - A while back I read a fic for another fandom in which the main character is imprisoned for his own safety.
So what I want is: A telepathic villain makes threats against the Avengers, specifically Tony. SHIELD and the Avengers decide that Tony is safer not knowing about the threat, because he'd go off on his own and try to fight the villain. SHIELD comes up with the idea to place Tony into a room with protected walls against telepathic attacks, essentially isolation. SHIELD agents do a in-the-middle-of-the-night kidnap thing and Tony doesn't know why this is happening to him. The rest of the Avengers are reluctant but ultimately agree. It won't be anything like Afghanistan, Tony will be getting three meals a day and no one will be hurting him. He'll be fine right?
Tony needs interaction, he needs to ramble and to tinker and to create. He's not only isolated, he doesn't know why he's there and he thinks his team is going to come and get him. But they never show and he starts losing it. So, the only logical thing to do is to hurt himself, so he can get some medical attention, and if he happens to die in the attempt, well, that works too.
He's elated to see the Avengers in the hospital. Until he discovers that they knew. What happens next? Does Tony ever forgive them?
Lots of angst and guilt, happy ending is OPTIONAL!"
Time is very fluid in this story, with multiple flashbacks, time skips, half-truths and skewed perspectives.
Main title and chapter titles come from John Casteen's chilling poem "Night Hunting"
Day 13
Tony realizes that no one is coming. At least not yet. He has to wait a little bit longer. It's not that hard. It's not. He has food and a bed and a shower. No way to shave but it's okay. He'd always wanted to know how he'd look with a long hobo-beard.
His fingers are itching to do something, to create, to tinker. His mind's running itself in circles but so far its manageable.
No demands yet and all Tony has to do and sit back, let the Avengers do their job.
Day 25
Tony realizes that no one is coming.
Sometimes he wonders what's happened to stall them. Sometimes he wonders if they've been hurt.
Some nights, he lays there, in the painful silence, and wonders whether they've forgotten him already.
Day 36
The pressure inside his head hurts so he sits on the floor, head against the cool wall, leaning on his desk. It's fast become his favorite area of the room.
His fingers itch and he's taken to biting the cuticles, the soft flesh that surrounds his nails. It was a childhood habit he'd thought he'd kicked. He's gotten to the point where he's drawing blood but he can't care, no, his mind is in a million different places.
There is nothing, nothing but silence and Tony wants to scream until his throat is raw.
He settles, instead, for continuing his designs. He's rapidly filling up the paper left to him, pouring the thoughts that race circles around in his brain.
He scratches absently at his beard then taps harshly at the arc reactor, the solid thumping sound bringing him comfort.
Day 49
No demands yet. No rescue yet. Nothing.
Tony does scream, long and loud until he can't breathe.
And then he screams some more.
Day 66
"What the fuck do you want you motherfuckers? What do you want from me?!"
Tony beats his fists against the walls and God it hurts but the pain is grounding, a tether and an idea forms in the back of his mind, there in the darkness and the chaotic landscape because of the silence and the isolation there's nothing here, there's no one.
There's no one.
Day 78
His music had always been a way to focus (Pepper had always found it obnoxious). The loud beats had kept his mind in the present, provided him with sensory input that yes, he was in his workshop and yes, he still existed and had not been swallowed up by his racing thoughts.
He needed interaction (the back and forth of it all, unpredictable patterns of response) and now he can only crave it.
He wonders how long it's been since he slept because his brain drifts too much in the silence and when he remembers himself again he realizes that he's moved to the desk and already drawn the line that marks another day in this place.
His mind floats again, getting lost, and he's powerless to stop it.
Day 80
Tony figures that at any time now they'll come in. Not his team (Steve, Clint, Bruce, Natasha, Thor, Steve, Clint, Bruce…) no, that ship has sunk so long ago, no, the interrogators (water, water, pain, water).
Afghanistan (Middle East, weapons demonstration, 33 degrees north of the equator, 65 degrees east of Greenwich) had kicked in weeks ago but it's at this point that he realizes he has no contingency plan (plan of attack, plan of defense, what if they come?).
So he takes a portion of his daily meals (delivered 3 times a day, 21 times a week, 84 times a month, 1008 times a year, 10,080 times a decade…) which he barely eats anyway (losing weight and muscle mass, no exercise, need protein, need strength) and begins to stash it under his bed.
He pulls out the napkin holding the small pile of rice (432 individual pieces, 12 that have stuck together and 259 that he ate) and nods at it, expressing his approval.
Day 91
He sleeps, awakes and forces himself to close his eyes.
Maybe when he opens them again, maybe he'll be home again.
It was all a joke, Tony. Just a joke.
He laughs to himself because its fucking hilarious.
Day 106
He knows he's getting sick (the lack of sleep the lack of food there's no one here didn't I draw that design already? Where's Pepper hey JARVIS why won't you answer no Dum-E put that fire extinguisher down pass me that wrench shut up shut up too quiet)
His throat burns and he feels hot and they've sent him ibuprofen but he takes the pills and flushes them down the toilet, watching as they swirl away with sick satisfaction (no pun intended or maybe it is he can't really remember) and wonders if maybe he could shrink himself he could leave the same way, like a fish flushed down he could travel to the ocean and keep swimming until the sharks come because the sharks always come drawn by the blood and boy is he bleeding, hard and fast, and the sharks smile at him through false teeth with empty promises, these shapeshifters of betrayal as friendship and family and trust are shredded on the edges of so many razor-sharp teeth.
Day 107
The fever claims him easily and he paces for a long time (553 steps, 19 times he tripped and twice that he actually fell)
His thoughts tumble into another, and he tastes foul water in his mouth because it fucking hurts, all this data, this formless input, so raw and incapacitating.
He sits in his corner, leans against the desk and uses the last bit of empty wall space left (the rest is already overflowing with his chicken-scratch lettering, since he ran out of paper 37 days ago) (37 days, 888 hours, 53,280 minutes, 3,196,800 seconds…)
"JARVIS?" He calls, voice rough from disuse and hears the reply in his addled mind.
"JARVIS it's time that I solved it don't you think? It's time that I set everything straight, that I figured it out. I can do it, I know I can. I have to try at least. Trying counts right? Yeah, yeah it does. Of course. Never let it be said that I didn't try."
He starts at the beginning, the years of his childhood, his parents, and that one thing he had craved, thirsted for, wanted so badly but had never quite been able to have.
"Howard and Maria, what a pair. I was unplanned you know? Dad flipped shit, he didn't want me. Never really did I think. I heard my mom talking with Aunt Peggy one day. Dad had asked her to get an abortion. Well, she uh obviously didn't, but still. To be or not to be right? Could've almost been the latter."
Tony continues the timeline.
"Age 7, I was being shipped to boarding school. 8 years later and I was coming back cause they ended up as road kill and then there was MIT and Rhodey. Then Pepper. Then Yinsen. He died too."
Tony crosses out the name, just as he'd done for his parents.
"Then Stane," another cross "and Coulson" another cross, which feels wrong for some reason but he just barrels on, "and the Avengers."
Tony stares at the wall. He stares until the fog begins to clear, until the not-truth becomes the truth and he can finally accept it, what he's always secretly known and feared and fought against but now...now...
"Dad was right wasn't he? Everything he ever said to me. He. Was. Right."
Tony laughs and laughs because it's so fucking simple!
"It's me isn't it? It's always been me. The red on my hands, my attitude, oh the things I've done, so fundamentally flawed and fucked up…I can't blame them, can I, JARVIS? Can't blame a single one…they ran for the hills while they could…"
They all want to stop.
Steve is clenching his fists and Bruce has long ago broken his glasses in half.
The time-stamp on the footage makes it clear what they're about to see.
"We need to keep going," Natasha's voice is level and controlled, ever so brave and Clint loves her fiercely in that moment.
Coulson un-pauses the video recording and they continue.
Day 108 (3 Months, 2 Weeks, 5 days)
(Or, 2,592 hours, 15,552 minutes…)
It's logical.
It's rational and simple, why didn't he think of it before?
He only has one way out of here.
Everything is too loud inside his head. Yinsen and the Chitauri, Thor and his pop-tarts and Steve and Pepper and poking Bruce and catching Clint, running from Natasha after he threw up on her floor in the Tower, Howard in all his violent anger and JARVIS's crisp tones, the last time he saw his mom and Coulson's disapproving voice but amused eyes.
There's designs and sketches, upgrades and questions, more answers than he knows what to do with.
"Stop pretending to be a hero."
"If we activate the portal, stabilize the core and assign matrices for focal points, set up some sort of relay…"
"The Iron Man technology is a dangerous weapon that should be in the hands of experienced, military personnel, not some rich civilian who doesn't know the first thing about war!"
"Stark men are made of iron, Maria! Stop pampering the boy, he has to learn to be a man! I won't have a weakling for a son."
"Stop pretending to be a hero."
"So, you're a man who has everything and nothing."
All Tony really wants, all he really needs, is some relief.
He wants everything to stop. The voices, the thoughts, the memories.
So he hits his head against the wall and everything sharpens, focuses, streamlines. So he does it again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Honestly, this was one of the most challenging fills I have taken crack at in a while as the prompt required that the team, as in-character as possible, commit an out-of-character act and betray one of their own. In essence, this is the journey of the team trying to repair the damage they inflicted on one of their own and the subsequent damage they inflicted upon themselves.