Inescapable

Ch. 25

Tony hated himself and would have fallen back into the deep pit of alcoholic despair had it not been for Steve himself. He pushed Tony to bathe and shave, remove the three days' worth of stench and dirt from himself. Admittingly, once Tony emerged from the restroom, he felt like a new man. But Steve didn't stop there. Once washed up, Steve grabbed Tony and dragged him towards the medical wing on campus. Straight to and through the door of Dr. Raynor, who seemed to have been expecting Tony to visit for quite some time.

Once Steve left him to it, Raynor took over, getting straight to the point. "Tell me about what happened?" At first Tony stared at the god-awful painting behind Raynor. "I should really make sure there's higher quality artwork in these rooms. God that's ugly."

"Mr. Stark... you're deflecting." Raynor said as she kept her gaze on Tony.

Tony sighed, "Mr. Stark was my father. Just call me Tony."

"Alright. Tony. Tell me about the incident." Raynor asks again, her demeanor never changing. Tony felt the weight of her stare on him, knowing it wouldn't budge. "Don't you already know what happened?" He answered back sarcastically.

Raynor subtly lifted an eyebrow and jotted something down on the pad in her hands. "Why would you assume I would know?"

"Because people talk. I may have been drunk off my ass for the past couple of days, but I could hear people talk as they passed by the lab." Tony grimaced, hating that word got out about his horrible actions.

"Let me be honest and assuage your worries Mr. -" Tony glared at her, and she corrected herself quickly, "Tony. The only talk there has been going around lately is of your drunken state. From what I gather, it's not a sight many have seen in quite a while..."

Tony scoffed. "That's nothing. I've been worse."

"I see..." Raynor jotted down again on her notepad. "So please, enlighten me Tony, what happened to cause you to relapse into severe alcoholism?"

Tony rolled his eyes and laid back onto the couch, keeping his eyes plastered at the ceiling. "I killed someone." He was surprised how simply the confession came out, not one to usually be so cut and dry like that.

"How did that occur?"

Tony recounted the tale, painting himself in the worst possible light. Counting out his numerous failures and mistakes. The last one causing you to leave, not just campus, but the fucking planet. When he finished, he glanced over to Raynor, half expecting to see her glaring at him with hate and malice, half expecting to see her dead ass asleep. But she sat there, same plastered expression she had earlier, stupid fucking notepad in hand.

"Really? That's it? No looks of disgust? Not gonna commit me into the looney bin?" She said nothing yet continued to stare at him. That riled Tony up, making him get up lightning quick and point a finger in her face. "Say it! Say I'm a monster!"

Raynor simply lowered her notepad and cleared her throat before speaking. "Please lower your finger from my face Tony. Sit down."

Her nonchalant attitude snuffed out the flame and fight out of Tony. He plopped down on the sofa again, feeling weighted down by his actions.

"Do you regret your actions, Tony?" Raynor's question caught Tony off guard.

"Of course I do, isn't that fucking obvious?" He scoffs, maybe realizing this woman isn't highly qualified for this line of work.

She simply states, "then you're no monster." Those four words freeze Tony in his place, stopping thoughts of firing Raynor and getting more competent employees. "A monster would not regret his actions. You do." She states simply, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. But it hadn't been to Tony, he had felt the weight of his actions drown him into a dark abyss; but those four words made him see a small ray of light. A possibility.