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There was darkness.
And pain, a lot of pain.
It was like both of them were stuck in an eternal loop of routine, not leaving unless it is absolutely necessary too. Too scared to stop in the fear that if they did, the cold reality might slap them on their face and they would be again drowning in the endless sea of grief and suffocation they are floating in, barely above the water.
Tony was doing better in a sense.
One month had passed to that haunted night, and to some extent he had been able to make up his mind, come to terms with his life–the cruel reality that felt no less than a nightmare. The gnawing emptiness was still inside him, making him believe for once that maybe he really didn't have a heart. Though it hurt a bit less now, the edges had stopped shredding him to pieces long ago.
It was just a numb ache.
Almost like his body was getting used to it.
His days had long blurred into each other, having no sense of day or night or what was happening outside his safe sanctuary. It was all the same routine, using his hands, making new tech, repairing the old one– sometimes even breaking one just so he could repair it again. Anything, everything to keep his mind off the reality.
The attached bathroom to the lab, and the refrigerator were the only places he would leave. And thanks to Bruce, he didn't have to leave his lab for new clothes or food too, because he would get them by his door every week with a letter about how worried everyone was about him – a letter he hadn't bothered to read since the first one.
Because when the first one came, he did read it and as soon as his gaze fell on the word– her name. He had felt all the pieces of him–pieces that he had gathered very difficultly again falling apart. His head in his hands, as he rocked back and forth trying to regain what seemed to be like the last of oxygen, feeling his lungs, his heart– that gnawing emptiness being squeezed making him dizzy and nauseous.
It had been hours before he had managed to gain some semblance of control back.
After that, he hadn't risked reading any word on that letter again. Any letter again.
His thumb brushed across the small picture that was framed in a golden frame. Feeling the emptiness tightening its edges, as he watched the golden sunlight in the frame lighting his mother's face, her soft hand resting on his shoulder while he smiled. A real smile.
The memory seems so far away now, yet so close.
Like December and January.
He remembered the distant memory of the day this was clicked, it was his fifteenth birthday and Howard had yet again stood him up, whole day and he hadn't even received a cold 'happy birthday' to him. He was used to it, but it still hurt, nonetheless. It was then his mother had grabbed his hand ushering him out, taking him to his favorite restaurant and got him a new tool box which he would later use to tinker with stuff whenever he would feel overwhelmed. He remembered the ice cream cone they had bantered over, before finally eating half and giving half to his mother.
