Work Text:
Maybe - just maybe
“Betrayal” is the word that echoes in his head over and over again, even long after it all is over.
Tony spends the immediate days and weeks after his return from the cave in Afghanistan and the messy ordeal that followed after in a haze. He’s building, talking, walking, fighting, but not really living . He drinks more, sleeps less.
Pepper worries - so does Rhodey. Then he almost dies again, and in the aftermath of it, he keeps drinking more, hiding away from everyone else, too scared of his own shadow to deal with anything.
When he needs to get out of his lab, because there is literally no other choice, Tony plasters a bright white and incredibly fake smile on his face. His public persona can deal with it all, when he really can’t. But no one needs to know that.
Rhodey stays close whenever he can, but his job pulls him away. Tony appreciates the effort, he really does, but he doesn't want his best friend to see him like this. Which is saying something, given that they’ve known each other for decades and that they even lived together while in college - Rhodey has seen Tony in a very sorry state plenty of times before, but never quite like this.
He hides.
It takes a while for all of it to settle in even when he knew it before. Obadiah, a man who saw him grow up, who stood by his side ever since Tony can remember, sold him out in cold blood due to nothing but greed for more.
How long had he been planning this? Did he already think about this when he stood with his large and meaty hand on Tony’s shoulder when they buried Howard and Maria, ready to take over everything and manipulate him as needed?
Did he only start it later - and why in the first place?
Part of Tony, the small and hurt part that still sees Obadiah Stane as a member of his family, despite being betrayed and terrified, still mourns him. He also asks himself when exactly this man started to hate him enough to want him dead, or if he ever really cared in the first place.
It makes him sick to think about, how much he trusted him, only to be met with hatred.
Tony drinks more, throwing back drink after drink, and then he stumbles to the bathroom just in time before he’s sick everywhere.
He loses time after that, but when he comes back to himself he sits on the tile floor next to the toilet and stares ahead.
Faintly, he can hear Rhodey from the other side of the door, calling out for Tony and demanding he open the door or he’ll kick it in - he sounds panicked, and while Tony tries to get up from the floor, he wonders when the hell he even locked the door and how long it’s been since he entered the room.
Everything around him is fuzzy, and Rhodey sounds more and more fearful now. He is about to make true on his thread and kick down the door, when Tony opens it and looks him into the eyes, his own ones empty and dead.
Rhodey blinks, at looks at Tony. Even though he’s clearly alive and awake, it actually doesn’t make him feel any better to see him. The state of his best friend worries him, very much so.
Somehow, he manages to drag him off to bed and Tony falls into a light, fretful sleep.
In his dreams, the smirking face of Obadiah appears, gloating and laughing as Tony struggles for breath, unable to move. He is forced to watch the man who was like a father to him rip the ARC reactor out of his chest, the very device that keeps him alive.
Obadiah laughs, and Tony wakes up screaming, kicking off the tangled blankets and bolting out of bed. He hides in the bathroom again, shaking apart on the floor and the cold laugh still echoing inside of his head.
Even years later, with Obadiah long dead and his own life very much changed, Tony still wakes up in a cold sweat. His nightmares have long changed their faces - there are plenty of them these days.
But even now, when he knows aliens and Hydra and AIM and countless other horrors that this universe holds, he’s still trembling at night at the thought of fighting a man he considered family to life and death.
Tony is alive - he won, they say. Sometimes, he’s not too sure.
Those nights, he doesn’t go back to bed. He pours a drink instead, watching the dark fold over the city that never sleeps. Sometimes, he’ll get company then, and the night doesn’t end up as bad.
On other days though, he remains lonely and he drinks, keeps drinking until he’s passed out somewhere, and one of his teammates or Rhodey or Pepper stumbles over him in the morning. But they drag him to the nearest couch then, arranging his limbs to something resembling a human being and spreading a soft blanket over him. He’ll always find a glass of water, salt crackers and pain killers on the table, then.
And after one too many times, due to a miracle or simply JARVIS, Tony finds himself no longer alone at the bar those nights.
He’ll still drink, still gets buzzed. But they’ll always stop him before he seriously hurts himself.
Maybe, just maybe, he’ll manage to take the offered help one day and call that damn phone number of that one doctor. He carries the business card in his wallet at all times, hidden behind the credit cards, but still in the same place years after receiving it.
He didn’t find the courage to call yet.
But Maybe, just maybe. One day.
* ~
Square: "Betrayal"