Anxiety is Dangerous in the Dark- Iron Man One-Shot

Can You Ever Really Win Against Your Demons?

TRIGGER WARNING-PTSD FLASHBACKS, ANXIETY ATTACKS, SELF-HARM, AND SUICIDAL IDEATIONS.

In the first Iron Man, there's a scene where Pepper is in Tony's house looking for him, but can't find him. After searching, she finally located him in his lab, trapped in an Iron Man suit, while three or four robots work on getting him out. She doesn't really know what to say, but it's clear that she's exasperated. Tony just looks over and says,"Okay, let's face it, this is not the worst thing that you've caught me doing." Everyone gets the joke, like, cool, they managed to throw in an innuendo about masturbation, haha.

But...what if it wasn't

I know, I'm thinking too much into it, there's probably no more to Tony's statement than what it's obviously about. But, at the same time, we all know that Tony suffers from anxiety, PTSD, insomnia, and depression. He's also an alcoholic and is extremely impulsive.

So, imagine that Tony has another nightmare. He wakes up sweaty and shaken, decides to go work on his suits, he doesn't need the sleep anyways. But, after another hour or so, he realizes that it's not working. Usually he can throw himself into his work to stop having flashbacks and stop the waves of anxiety that threaten to crush him. But, tonight, he can't shake the images that keep flashing through his head; the terrorists, Yensen taking his last breath, the people who have betrayed him and those he's let down, Pepper slipping through his fingers, his failures, the aliens, the wormhole, dying, he can't get rid of any of it. He gives the suits up as a bad job and instead to have a drink. Or five. Luckily, the kitchen in his lab is stocked with all of the necessities, and that includes plenty of alcohol.

So, he's on his sixth glass of whiskey, having thrown back the other five in record time, and slowly realizing that the alcohol is doing absolutely nothing. The images and noises won't stop, the cacophony of of explosions and war and invasions and deaths and voices won't quit bombarding him. And when he realizes that the alcohol is making his anxiety worse instead of better, he doesn't put it down, but instead drinks more, feeling confined, trapped inside his own head and all of his failures, or which there are many. He starts hyperventilating as the noise reached a new crescendo, staring blindly around but not seeing anything in front of him, anything based in reality. Instead he sees the same things that haunt his nightmares over and over and overandoverandoverandover again, so fast that it all becomes a sickening blur. He yells, just archaic sounds really, nothing coherent, hoping to shut up the sounds in his head, to shock them into silence. Instead, the noises grow louder still, the images speeding up as if they can feel his desperation for them to stop and wants to feed on his misery. In the back of his mind, he knows it's all him, that he needs to do something besides drink more and make everything worse, besides subconsciously trying to ruin his own sanity. But instead of acknowledging that, he just yells again, this time screaming at the voices to leave him the hell alone. He hopes Pepper doesn't hear as he yells until his voice grows hoarse. He vaguely heard Jarvis ask if he's alright, but Tony screams at him too, to be quiet, leave him alone, he's fine, he's okay. Mercifully that's the one voice that shuts up.

He finally can't physically bear the weight of his guilt and pain, and he slides to the floor, drawing his knees up to his chest and slamming his head into the wall behind him repeatedly. He starts crying, sobbing, really, the tears and his own thoughts making him gasp for breath. With one hand at his side bracing himself, he reaches an arm over his head to grab at the whiskey glass sitting on the counter beside him, even though he knows he shouldn't, even though he knows it will do more harm than help, because, well, old habits die hard. But his hand slips, and the glass falls to the floor beside him and shatters, breaking his last illusion of self-control, and making the anger that he feels towards himself override any rational thought.

He slams his hand down onto the mess, wincing as a dozen pieces of glass stab into it. He holds the shaking extremity up to his face, trying to focus on it as blood wells up from several places and starts falling fast to the floor. It takes a moment for the pain to completely penetrate into his alcohol-inhibited brain, but when it does, Tony immediately regrets his great idea to lose control, groaning and hunching over his injured hand. He screws his eyes shut tight and leans his head back against the wall behind him as wave after wave of thought-annihilating pain courses through his hand and arm, only allowing him to think cuss words that very thoroughly damn him to the deepest circles of hell, he's sure.

Because of the dozen slivers of glass now taking up residence in his hand, and because his brain is slugged in his drunkenness, he doesn't really notice the quiet. Only when the pain in his hand becomes a dull throbbing ache does Tony freeze, sitting up and staring around his lab. The sounds in his head, the flashbacks that he had just been having....they weren't gone, exactly, but seemed as if they were coming through a badly tuned radio, or a TV without a consistent signal. The noises were out of synch with what he saw and weren't coming through as overwhelmingly as before, and what he saw just didn't look as realistic as it did before, as the reality actually in front of him. But almost as if they could hear what he was thinking, the noises in his head start growing louder again, increasing in volume with every ragged breath he takes. With a growl of frustration, and as if he had meant to do it all along, Tony seizes a jagged piece of glass from the ground. He holds out the arm with the already injured hand. Not really registering what he's doing, but knowing that it will make the flashbacks stop, Tony savagely swipes down on his inner forearm with the glass, not making a sound as it slices open his skin, bright red blood spattering the ground.
Finally, finally, the noises stop, and he doesn't see anything but his bleeding arm. He brings the glass down on it again and again and again, marveling in how quiet everything is, and how peaceful he feels for the first time in, god, years. It hurts, what he's doing, but he welcomes the pain because it distracts him from the emotional pain and guilt that he always carries around-and hides well. But maybe he deserves both anyways. Maybe he deserved more than even that, because of the people dead on his account, the families torn apart because of him. Maybe he deserves a lot more.

So, just as suddenly as he had started cutting, Tony stops, dropping the piece of glass like it had burned him and staggering upright. The blood dripping from his arm mixes with the whiskey on the ground and makes a weird pattern, distracting him for a moment, but he just shakes his head and moves on, his mind thankfully no longer moving too fast for him to calm down. Instead, the whispers in his head of mothers crying for their sons and children asking him why he'd killed their parents motivates him to keep moving until he finds what he's looking for. He digs through multiple drawers and cabinets until he finds what he needs, having to keep rubbing his eyes and leaning back against walls. Maybe getting drunk wasn't the best idea. Finally, he finds what he needs, and stumbles back to the mess he had made, leaning back against the wall and sinking to the floor again. He doesn't take his eyes off of what he holds in his hand. He thinks to himself that it's the best thing to do, the only thing to do, really. The only things to right what wrongs he had caused in the world. But, even with this certainty, he still hesitates to pull the trigger...

And hesitates

And hesitates

And h e s i t a t e s

Pepper finds him in the morning, still sitting against a wall in his lab, still clutching the gun in his hand. His hair a mess, his eyes bloodshot and locked on the weapon he was holding. She takes it all in; the glass on the floor mixing with the blood and whiskey on the ground, Tony's swollen and cut up hand, the lab a disaster, his white-knuckled grip on the gun, his dead eyes, and the 14 red jagged lines now crossing his wrist and inner forearm.

"Tony," She says, her voice breaking along with her heart,"what...?" But she trails off, not knowing what to say. She simply stares as he keeps looking down at the gun in his hand, and says in a hollow, lifeless voice,"It felt right that I was in pain, because I deserved it. So I figured that because of the lives that I've destroyed and taken, that I didn't deserve to have mine anymore. And you know," he finally looks up at her, showing some emotion, his voice cracking. He manages to maintain eye contact for a second, but looks away ashamedly before saying,"I still don't know if I'm completely wrong."

There are few worse things to be caught doing.