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"
Tony moves around a lot. He bounces from place to place, a man lost, a leaf blowing in the wind.
His hair was shaved for the surgery and he keeps it short, the different feeling of tiny bristles against his palm strange but not unwelcome. He allows his beard to grow on the sides, so that his entire jaw is covered.
He ditches the idea of contacts or hair dye and goes instead for jeans and a t-shirt.
His hands shake and he goes to five doctors before one has the guts to look him in the eye and stand his ground and tell him that it is psychosomatic. Tony accepts the diagnosis with a nod and a job offer.
And all the while, JARVIS keeps him alerted, lets him know when the Avengers are close.
Sometimes, Tony hangs around, decides that he'll let them catch up to him. Sometimes, he forgives them.
But he never believes those words, that sentiment, and so he keeps moving.
Official Transcript of Post-Op. Evaluation: EXCERPT 016
Patient: Stark, Anthony E.
Psychiatrist: Dr. Samson, Leonard
Samson: Mr. Stark, can you tell me more about your father?
Stark: There's really not much to say.
Samson: Anything will be just fine.
Stark: Have you ever thought you knew a person, but then, you find out that you never really knew them to begin with? That everyone tells you all these great, heroic stories, all true to everyone but you? Have you ever been cheated like that?
Samson: …No, I can't say I have.
Stark: [pause] Then yeah. There's not really much more I can say.
Steve wants to take it back.
He wants to go back in time, to stop this all from happening. It's a childish notion, he knows that. But he's at the end of his rope, shoulders sagging with exhaustion that seems bone-deep and permanent, like it's been there for years.
He feels like a failure.
"Coulson…He's found more videos…"
Clint holds himself tall, alert as always. But Steve knows he's as tired as he is. As they all are.
Because in the end, it wasn't Loki or Doom or A.I.M. that had brought Tony Stark to his knees.
No. That honor, that unknowing crime, belonged to his own team.
Don't people say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions?
Day 85
Tony sees things in numbers. Force, velocity, joules and pounds and degrees and angles.
He knows the exact force it will take for him to smash his head against the wall for it to hurt. Knows the number of time he'll have to do it for him to pass out. The angle at which, with proper force and timing, he could, quite possibly, break his own neck.
He blinks. Blinks again.
But the numbers don't fade.
Day 50
His nails catch on the arc reactor's tiny grooves.
A simple twist and a pull and then…then what?
Yinsen's voice in his head again.
Tony wonders if he could greet death like an old friend.
Day 67
Tony curls up and Tony cries, room silent as always except for the occasional hitch of his breath.
Bruce comes up with the idea to visit the place. The scientist makes it to the door, peeks inside, before he draws back. The Other Guy has never been good with small spaces, he explains, and though they all know it's much more than that, they say nothing.
He'll wait for them outside and that's enough.
The room isn't as small as the video made it out to be but Clint knows that that's not what matters.
He looks around, wondering off-handedly if he'd have been able to escape.
The walls are covered in writing, the scrawling lettering familiar in a way that tightens something in his gut.
He runs his fingers over the words and numbers, trying to make sense of it all.
Then he looks to the left and down of the desk, to the rust colored stain, Tony crashing his head against the wall, palms on either side, just going, all living, frenzied motion against an immovable object, and realizes that the breaking of a man isn't built out of things like sense and reason. No, the choreography of a fall is much more complex, made out of pain and fear and treason.
Clint feels sick.
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