Avengers: Reader Inserts

Invisible Pain Part 1 ~ Tony Stark x Reader

Word Count: 3,050ish

Summary: You haven't told the team something important about you out of fear of what they'd think.

Notes: This is based on me in my life. This is a very personal one shot for me, so please be kind.

~~~

You were 17 years old when you were diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, in every joint of your body. This meant that you had pain in every joint, that would only get worse with time. Your arthritis was the worst in your shoulders making backpacks, lifting, and even getting dressed the extremely difficult some days.

Like any other illness, you had your good days and your bad days. You and your doctors were still trying to figure out how to help you, nothing seemed to work well or for very long. But you continued on, cause that's what you had to do. Especially because your job very rarely left you have a bad day.

How you became an Avenger is really quite unknown and confusing to you. But here you were, on the world's greatest team of heroes, saving the day from anything and everything, almost everyday. No one on the team, but Fury, knew about your arthritis. Even your best friend, Tony, didn't know.

You didn't want them to see you any different or take pity on you, or compare you to old people (which happened way too much when you were first diagnosed). Then there was the chance that they wouldn't believe you, which happened too often as well. Because people couldn't see you were in pain and you did a good job at hiding it, so how bad could it really be?

Most days, you just fought through the pain, pushing yourself harder than you knew you probably should. But you had too. It was your job.

You woke up one morning, immediately knowing it was going to be one of those very terrible, bad days. It a been a few years since a day like this, so this one came as a little bit of a shock. Just breathing seemed to take a lot of your energy and tears built up as you tried to move your arms.

"Agent L/N," FRIDAY called, "it seems that your heart rate is elevated, would you like me to fetch someone for you?"

"No, FRIDAY," you responded. "I'm good."

You didn't want to let anyone see you like this. Weak, fragile. Or the chance of them not believing you after a while. You just didn't want to go through that again. After pushing yourself through the pain to sit up, you reach over and turned on your shoulder heating pad, resting it on both your shoulders. Everything was screaming at you for every little movement. So you tried to not take too deep of breaths or move at all, leaning against the headboard with your eyes closed, focused on the heating pad, slowly heating up.

"Hey, Y/N!" Tony exclaimed, knocking on your door. "You in there? Breakfast is ready and we have a mission briefing in ten."

Crap. You had forgotten about the mission briefing.

"Thanks for the reminder, Tony!" You replied. "I'm not feeling like breakfast today, but I'll meet you in there for the briefing!"

"I'll save you a seat!"

Hearing his footsteps leave, you sighed. Did you need breakfast? Yes, especially if you were going to take some pain killers. But did you have the strength to get there? Not a chance. Clenching your eyes shut to prepare yourself for the fire of your joints, you moved over to the edge of the bed. Looking down at your attire, you knew you should change but there was no way you were going to be able to take off the shirt and put another on.

Biting your bottom lip, you slowly stood up. Waiting there a bit to balance yourself before taking that painful first step. Today, your right hip was worse than your left, though they both still hurt like hell, so you were limping towards the door.