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Tony tries his best to be absentminded during these therapy sessions. He’s been around the ringer enough times to know that if he opens his chest of traumas he might have trouble closing it, so he sits back and he listens as his therapist tries to crack the cold case of Tony Stark.
“I thought you said you’d have an open mind about this,” she says. “Do you think you’re staying true to your word?”
Tony glares up through his fingers as he rests his elbow on the desk.
The therapist sighs. “Nobody is forcing you to be here, you know.”
“I know,” he mutters.
“So what are you afraid of?” She asks, and that one feels almost targeted, and he blinks up at the screen.
“I’m not afraid.” It’s a lie and they both know it.
“Let me rephrase. What’s holding you back from telling me the truth?”
“I don’t know.”
She raises an eyebrow. “I have some guesses.”
“Oh, goodie. Let’s hear it.” Tony’s words were bitter, but in truth, he was afraid she might have him beat this time.
“I know you’re the type to bottle up your issues,” she says.
Tony’s instinct is to shut down and protect his ego.
“It’s better that way.”
“How so?”
“If I don’t think about it… maybe I can pretend it never even happened.”
“Pretend what never happened?”
She’s prompting him, daring to pull open that closet of fears.
“All of it,” he breathes, because he’s pretty sure his resolve is crumbling. “The desert and the wormhole and all the suffering I caused.”
Tony’s chest is tight, but the therapist keeps asking her questions and he wants to tell her to stop, but for some reason, the pain feels right.
At least, it feels right until she pries about what happened New York, and his chest closes a little tighter and he realizes he’s starting to struggle for breath.
“I’m done,” Tony says sharply, cutting her off. “Sorry. I’m done.”
“Tony?”
“I said I’m done.”
“What are you feeling right now?”
“I don’t know,” he huffs, looking anywhere but the screen.
“When I brought up the New York situation you shut down on me.”
“Yeah, for good fucking reason,” he says through gritted teeth. “Things don’t end well when I think about that.”
“What does that mean?”
Tony wills her to stop asking questions but he starts to think that maybe it’s too late. He tries not to blink, for the backs of his eyelids reflect flashing images of giant, ancient aliens and the cold, empty look of death.
“Ah, fuck,” he forces as the breath is sucked from his lungs. There it is, the sickeningly familiar hopeless feeling, the same one he felt when he fell through a wormhole into another galaxy. He doesn’t think the feeling has really left him since.
“Tony—“
He stands up, movements uncoordinated, and slams his laptop screen shut. His hands lay flat on the glass table, supporting his weight, and the quick succession of inhales and exhales don’t seem to slow.
He feels bad for cutting the session off like that but right now he doesn’t have the energy to dwell on it; the deafening static is spreading.
His fingers go numb with it, like how they feel when a limb falls asleep, and he presses them into the cold glass table hoping it’ll absorb the feeling. It doesn’t.
His vision comes in patches, like a spotty TV when the scenes skip and the audio doesn’t line up quite right. He just wished he had a pause button right now to slow everything down.
Desperately, he tries to think of a plan, some fool-proof way to snap him out of it. His eyes fall shut for a moment too long, and the great, unhinged jaws of ancient blue aliens flash behind his eyelids. He gasps, eyes going wide and wild again.
Nothing is working.
Stumbling forward, he swings the door open and winces as it clamors against the adjacent wall that he leans a hand on for support. His breath is ragged.
“Are you okay?”
Tony tries to focus his senses but they’re all jumbled up. He can only just make out Steve’s shape standing in the hallway in front of him.
“Cap,” he rasps.
“Yep. It’s me.” Steve’s words go sharp with focus. “You look…”
Tony rubs his hands down his face, chest heaving. “It’s fine,” he chokes. “I’m— I’ll be fine.”
“Well, you look really pale.”
“I’m fine…” he whispers, and he doesn’t know what else to do so he just turns around and tries to walk down the hallway without looking lost. Steve keeps his stride easily.
“What’s goin’ on?” He demands, but his voice is quiet and concerned.
Tony shakes his head, teeth gritted as he fights to keep the flashbacks out, of sirens and demons and monsters and all the other things he can’t explain.
He doesn’t realize he’s leaning against the wall again until he slides down it. It’s more of a collapse, but still.
“Hey, look at me,” he hears Steve’s voice say. Through blurry eyes he does. “Can I do anything?”
“It’ll stop soon,” Tony mutters breathlessly, but it sounds like he’s convincing himself, too.
“What’ll stop?”
“I—“ he falters, cutting off. “I’m not—“
“You’re not being very descriptive,” he hears Steve say with an air of dry humor, but suddenly Tony can’t breathe.
His breath hitches. He’s too swept up in his own spiral, chest caving with the weight of his worries and fears because he knows for a fact that if the aliens ever come back he’s powerless to stop them. He nearly gives in to that hopelessness, but in front of him Steve crouches down and meets him at eye level.
He glances down the hallway and then back at Tony, determined to be a beacon of calm when Tony seems to need it most.
Tony holds his eye contact, even as his stomach twists and the static feeling spreads. He struggles, trying to forcibly slow his breathing, and the fact that he didn’t have control over this crushing fear only tightened the spiral.
“This, um,” Steve falters as Tony brings his shaking hands up to rubs down his face. “Look, this is a panic attack, right?” he asks finally.
Tony nods feverishly. He knows he’s on the road to full-blown hyperventilation but he just can’t find a way to stop it. He’s powerless, just like he always seems to be these days. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t protect the ones he loves from earth’s enemies and he’s powerless against the shame and fear that lives inside him.
He presses his back against the wall, breathing hard and heavy, eyes darting from Steve and then down to his shaky hands.
He starts to think the anxiety will never stop, and he decides that’s almost fitting. He spent his whole life building an armor to protect him from the world but now he’s finally found something that he’ll never stand a chance to.
He’s vaguely aware of the burn in his lungs, and through his haze he can see the concern on Steve’s face.
“You’ve gotta breathe,” he says softly. “Just slow down.”
Tony tilts his head back.
“Can’t,” he rasps.
“Yes,” Steve counters. “Look it’s easy.” He takes a deep breath, exaggerating it. For some reason he can’t explain, Steve’s words quiet the buzzing in his mind.
“Again,” Tony whispers, and Steve takes another deep breath and this time Tony can copy him.
“That’s it,” Steve murmurs.
Tony tries to breathe slowly for a minute but once Steve stops talking, the silence creeps in, and gives the smoldering flame of panic start to grow.
It can’t start up again, Tony thinks helplessly. He’s starting to think this might be the one that finally takes him down.
“Say something,” he whispers, giving Steve a desperate, searching look.
Steve looks bewildered. “Say what?”
“Anything. Fuck, Steve, please.”
Maybe something in Tony’s voice alarms him, because immediately he nods.
“Well, I don’t know what’s going on but I do know that whatever it is, you shouldn’t be feeling like this.”
Tony closes his eyes. Obviously, he wants to say, but that’s not how these things work.
“I only mean I don’t want to see you hurting,” Steve murmurs. “But I get it, you know. You’re usually so strong and steadfast but it can’t always be like that. You’re allowed to fall apart sometimes.”
Tony nods, trying to take a deep breath.
“And look, nothing lasts forever, ‘kay? This is gonna pass.” Steve gets the feeling he just needs to keep talking. “Besides, you— you’ve had these before, and it always passes. I swear to you, you’ll feel better in an hour. I know— I know it’s hard to believe right now but I promise you can relax ‘cause it won’t last forever.”
Steve hesitates, watching Tony count his breaths in time. He’s relieved to see him less frantic.
“Hey, once you feel better, we’ll watch your favorite movie and we’ll order some food and I’m gonna make sure you’re okay. It’ll be great.”
Tony appreciates Steve’s attempts at normalcy but there’s still a tightness in his chest and he feels the unfamiliar sting of tears in his eyes.
There’s a dark blue feeling that begins to spread. It deepens, overlapping with fear and shame, and he tilts his head back in frustration, chest beginning to rise and fall quicker. He’s growing hopeless, quick, wondering if he should just give in.
“I can’t,” he wheezes. He pulls his hands up to cover his face, looking smaller than ever, legs tucked in and leaned back against the wall.
It’s only when Tony removes his hands did Steve realize he’s crying. It isn’t like a regular cry, though, it’s panicked, and something about it nearly tears Steve’s heart in two.
“Stop it, Tony,” he whispers, forcing himself to be calm. “Look at me. You’re okay.”
“I can’t do this,” Tony gasps, catching Steve’s eyes. He hastily wipes his face.
“You’re gonna be okay,” Steve promises, but he’s getting nervous; are panic attacks supposed to last this long?
Tony only shakes his head, and for a minute the only sound is Tony’s ragged breathing and suppressed sobs.
Finally, it all becomes too much, and Tony decides that something’s gotta give. He can’t just sit here anymore.
“I just need to get out,” he gasps, struggling to stand up.
Steve shifts back, confusion splashed across his face and in his voice as he tries to help. “Get out of what, the hallway?“
“No, no— my fucking head,” Tony mutters. “Just need to get out of my fucking head and then I’ll be fine.” There’s a waver to his words that Steve can’t help but pick up on.
“Okay…” he murmurs and steadies Tony as he stands.
Somehow, with each step, the noise in his mind slowly relaxes. He gets to the far side of the building and immediately turns back around, keeping a quick pace and focusing on his lungs filling up with air and then releasing. His head is full of static and his legs are on autopilot, but the moving around and walking seems to be helping, so for the next ten minutes, he doesn’t slow.
“How long are you gonna walk in circles?” Steve asks finally, sitting back on the couch as Tony makes a long loop around the common area.
“This is the only thing that made it better,” Tony mutters.
“So you’re just going to keep goin’, forever?”
Tony swallows and slows to a stop. “No,” he decides with a sigh. The panic seems to have dissipated for now but Tony’s not entirely convinced it’ll stay that way. But Steve’s right, he can’t run forever. “No, but I think I need a drink.”
They make their way to the dry bar on the far side of the commons and Tony sits down on the stool and leans his forearms against the cold tile. He doesn’t move for a few minutes, making sure his breathing is in check.
When he feels okay enough he reaches for a the crystal flask of scotch behind the bar.
“You’re supposed to tell me this isn’t good for me,” Tony says to Steve, who glances at him for a moment before shrugging.
“Hey, back in the day, the drink cured everything,” Steve said. “You know, until they made it illegal.”
“But I bet it did, even then,” Tony sighed, as he brought the glass up to his lips.
“Damn right,” Steve grinned, turned up on one corner of his mouth.
Tony takes another sip and feels the liquor warm his stomach. It’s a familiar feeling, reminding him of different times, and he focuses on that as he ignores the way his hand still shakes when he lowers the glass back down to the table.
“During the prohibition,” Steve says. “My ma told me a drink cost around two dollars. You know how much that is in today’s money?”
“A lot, probably.”
“A whole lot,” he agrees.
“Were the drinks better or worse?” Tony asks.
Steve laughs. “So much worse.”
Tony cracks a half-smile and looks down at the scotch in his glass. Maybe turning to substances to pull him out of a crisis isn’t the healthiest choice, but at the same time, at least now he can breathe easier.
“I can’t stop seeing it,” Tony admits finally, after a few minutes of quiet.
Steve goes quiet, and for a moment Tony selfishly hopes Steve will say the same thing, so maybe he wouldn’t be alone in this pain.
But Steve isn’t wired this way.
“I mean, sometimes I don’t even think it was real. Steve, was it real?”
Something in Steve’s eyes looks alarmed, but he sits there with Tony and nods.
“The aliens were real,” he confirms, softly. “I promise, it was all real.”
“I don’t know if that makes it better, or worse,” Tony says after a moment. “Guess it doesn’t matter, though. No matter what I do,” he breathes, “I can’t escape it.”
“I know,” Steve murmurs again, and he says it in a way that says he knew it from the start.
They sit in an easy silence for a while, in the dim light of the in-house bar, and Steve is pretty comfident that Tony isn’t okay right now. The panic attack may have passed but he’s afraid that Tony might never be rid of the demons that plague him. More importantly, he’s worried that Tony might believe it, too. Steve’s stomach twists at the unfairness of it all.
He will never forget the look in Tony’s eyes when they found him lying shocked and frozen on the concrete after his thousand-meter plummet back to the Earth, back into to this world. Tony had made some dumb joke, but in his eyes there was a type of haunted Steve had never seen before.
He blinks, bringing himself back to the present. “One day, it won’t be so bad,” he says softly.
Tony bites his cheek and looks down at the glass of liquor. “Yeah,” he breaths. “I don’t know.”
“But running from your fears won’t get you any closer to peace,” he murmurs.
“You see what it does to me, though?” he mutters, turning his palm up and watching his hands shake. “This… this isn’t how people are supposed to be.”
“You’ve been through a lot,” Steve reminds him. “Do you— do you have hope?”
“Of?”
“Of— of being in a better place.” Steve takes a breath. “Of being yourself again.”
Tony grimaces, taking another sip of liquor. “I’m finding it.”
Steve nods, because there’s nothing else to do. Besides, what’s more important is that Tony’s not panicking anymore.
He sighs. “Well, don’t ever give up lookin’,” he says. “And that’s an order,” he adds, for good measure and a hint of humor.
A ghost of a smile graces Tony’s lips. “OK, captain.”