Here Stands a Man

3

He’s not surprised when the first person to visit him is Natasha. It was really only ever a question of how long it’d take her to turn up. She walks into the lab like she owns the place, the authoritative click of her boot heels announcing her presence long before she even opens the door. 

He doesn’t want her here, doesn’t want her to see him like this. There’s too much there, too much history clouding the water. He doesn’t want her to think he’s weak.

But she doesn’t say anything, just takes his bandaged hand and leads him gently but purposefully away from the metal on the workbench, the tangle of unadorned silver waiting patiently for its star so he can feel something, feel anything. He’s gone through so much material, so much time and energy, and he has nothing to show for it but scrap metal and knuckles webbed with scar tissue.

He doesn’t resist when she guides him up the stairs and into the elevator, unhooking the penthouse key from his belt loop and punching in the numbers. He should be surprised she knows how to get up to the penthouse, knows which key to choose. Should be a bit nervous, even. After all, he has never for a moment been cocky enough to believe she couldn’t rip him in half with her tiny hands, and now she knows where he sleeps.

But he feels none of these things. He just feels numb. He’s been here before, he’s no stranger to numb. But this time, for what may be the first time in his life, he doesn’t feel the need to force himself to feel with whores and booze. Not because he’s above that kind of behavior, because he most definitely is not, but because he doesn’t want to feel. He’d rather not feel anything at all for the rest of his life than face any emotion other than the blind rage that punctuates his numbness and drives him to do reckless things like build suits just to wreck them.

The elevator door opens and he follows Natasha compliantly to the long leather sofa. He waits for her to chastise him, pity him, even mock him, but she doesn’t. She just sits down next to him, close enough so he can feel her warmth but not close enough to touch him, and closes her eyes. And she stays like that, the both of them just being, for hours. And when she finally leaves, without having said a single word to him since she arrived, Tony realizes he feels something that isn’t anger, or grief, or self-hatred. It’s calm.

She’s already gone, but he still whispers thank you into the darkness.