Into the Abyss

Can you mend the broken, my dear? Can you fix the cracks?

White funeral flowers return in his nightmares, these days. Making his mind flicker in and out of focus in daytime each time he lay his eyes on a familiar color-

It was a new one, that kind that makes the inside of your guts freeze with nothing but pure horror.

White flowers were thrown down on an empty open grave, silent tears filled the sombre air-

He would wake up with a scream at the end of his throat, swimming in his cold sweat- eyes wide and unblinking the way the person could easily forget to speak.

("Why did you stop? Why did you leave?"- there is a desperate tone in the man's voice, wet gasps close to deep, hollow sobs "why did you?- WHY?")

It felt like his aching chest was narrowing with all the incoming screaming coming from the invisible ghost at the top of the tomb.

He wakes up screaming each time he reads the words carved on the stone.

"Anthony Edward Stark."

It made him restless even more than usual because he doesn't know why the dream is messing with his head in a way worse than Wanda's careless magic- it made him want to cry in confusion and helplessness at the same time.

Nightmares followed him from day to night, hour by hour as he kept carrying his own weight alone-

Thinking, yes. Maybe it's the time that he accepts this- accept the loneliness of his dreams, the dread in his chest as he stares at the emptiness of his room. Of his apartment-

("I don't want this"-)

Death isn't something he's not used to, death is an old friend of his- a preferred friend in his dreams- the first thing he thinks about looking at pepper, and the last thing he thinks about heading to bed.

(Some nights, alone with his mind, he would wish for an honorable way out- Something "Don't waste it Stark, Don't waste your life."- )

He met death a few times, the first time was a wake-up call in the middle of nowhere, a dark and cold cave in Afghanistan- dry heat devouring away the rest of his sanity, white-hot pain replaced itself at the center of his chest while dirty water filled his lungs- spasm of electricity running through his body in cold terror-

The second was slowly eating him up from the inside out, Poison spreading itself in his vines like fire- (eating, burning, eating, burning-) the tool to save became a tool to kill ("palladium poisoning, what a painful way to die." The thick heavy Russian accent of one Ivan Vanko still hunting his ears each time he looked at an old Arc Reactor core.)

The third time hit him hard and suddenly- like a strike of lightning- swimming aimless ahead, weightless and cold allover of hard metal and empty atmosphere- (the way the stars sparked, the way the Aura of the galaxy mixed itself in his own eye, a Blue Nebula- it was beautiful, a beautiful way to lose. An "it's a one-way trip, Stark." Played and played and played repeatedly in his head as he closed his eyes-) the horrifying part of his deep core that looked fascinated by the power of un-identified forces, a childhood poster movie came true- and then the blinding light of a nuclear bomb intensity- the crushing pressure of his unfunctional suit free falling by the sudden force of gravity-

(Sometimes, Sometimes it's something different, something real and painful and blurred around the edges, an orange unnatural horizon. A broken "Mr, Stark-" so soft and yet so deep, like a goodbye, like grief- then he hears a "We won, Mr. Stark." And he thinks he knows that voice, the anguish the filled its cracks, the "Tony-" he heard as he stared with unstable eyes at a hidden face, sobbing on his arm, shaking him to acknowledge-