Warning: Mentions of canon violence in the first Iron Man movie. Some self-loathing on Tony's part.
I haven't watched the movie in quite a long time, so there is a little bit of me playing fast and loose with the timeline. And hey, it's nice to post this on the right day after getting the timeline mixed up. :D?
The first thing Tony does when he gets back into his lab is rearrange everything.
It takes him the better part of a month to realize that no matter where he’s sitting to work, he can see the door.
*
He adds the additional security codes to get into the lab a little bit after that. Just him, Pepper, Rhodey, and Obadiah.
Pepper cocks her head to the side when Tony tells her. “What are the chances of someone getting past the other house security?”
Tony waves her away, irritated. “If they’re good enough to get past the house security, I think we can assume they’re determined. So, added security. There’s nothing wrong with making it as hard for them as possible.”
Pepper doesn’t say anything else.
*
His first priority is to redesign his own personal power source to something that’s a) not made out of spare parts while in a cave and b) somewhat more aesthetically pleasing. He’s perfectly aware his priorities are not like most people’s and he does, of course, make other improvements. If push comes to shove, he could probably live with something ugly if it kept his heart beating.
When he finishes, he holds the reactor in his hand and stares at it. He waits for the elation, but it doesn’t necessarily come like he was expecting. He’s done what no one else in the entire fucking world could do (because he is a god of engineering and technology) and he should be jazzed.
But whatever, he chalks it up to exhaustion, settles on the chair, and pops the old version out of his chest.
...and he can’t make himself put his hand in and replace it with new reactor.
So he calls up Pepper, has her do it, and tells her to toss the old reactor. He imagines crushing it into a tiny little cube that could be flushed down the toilet, along with all the crap about the fucking cave and the fucking car battery and Yinsen with holes in his chest.
*
The first couple times he has runs of not being able to sleep, Tony honestly doesn’t even notice, because he’s always operated on a sleep schedule dictated by the terms of whatever he was working on. If he needed to plow eighteen hours through, then he did and sleep the sleep of the just when he’d successfully finished the project.
And he is working, of course. First with the reactor in his chest, then with version two of the suit.
A night comes where he’s finished a stage of the new suit and he can’t start working on the next until some hardware arrives. He has a nice dinner with Pepper and unwinds with a couple beers. He’s planning on crashing and hopefully getting back to work the next morning.
When three am comes, he’s laying in bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering why the fuck he can’t get his heart to slow down.
*
The thing is, he sort of expected to have nightmares, in the way that he sure as fuck didn’t tell anyone. What the hell kind of grown man has nightmares?
What he isn’t expecting, is that when he can convince himself to shut down, is just how bad the nightmares turn out to be. Sometimes he’s on fire. Sometimes he’s trapped in the old suit, but it won’t turn on and he can hear the rattatat of gun fire. Sometimes he’s watching Yinsen die.
Tony gets really fucking tired of waking up to sound of his own harsh, strangled breath clawing out of his chest while his heart slams against his ribs and his hands claw at air and bedsheets.
*
Sometimes, in the deadest part of the morning when he’s sitting down in his lab staring at blue prints that he can’t make sense with exhausted eyes, Tony feels like he’s losing his mind. Or maybe he has lost his mind and he’s really still back in the cave and this is his way of escaping.
What’s weird, though, is that he can still get dressed, put on a suit, go smile and shmooze upset investors and have no one know.
He’s a great actor, or something.
*
Here’s the scene. Tony’s working on the second suit, half listening while Pepper almost cheerfully recites the newest numbers fallout from his announcement about Stark Industries. Tony’s repeating that he doesn’t care about the investors, they can go fuck themselves, and Obadiah needs to calm the hell down and trust Tony.
And then something gets knocked over by one of the robots. It’s happened a goddamn thousand times since Tony built the thing, but not since he got back.
And he knows what happened, he knows specifically because it’s happened so many times before. But it doesn’t actually matter in the moment that the loud bang echoes through the lab, because his body’s reaction doesn’t have jackshit to do with his logical mind.
He’s off his chair and on his knees, pressed against the worktable with his heart hammering and bile in the back of his throat. His body is pulsing, shaking with the dump of adrenaline in his system and he feels like his vision is flickering between Pepper rushing across the floor and the cave, like in those old movies.
“Tony?” Pepper lands down beside him.
“Don’t touch me,” he says, because if she does he’ll probably accidentally shove her halfway across the room and he really doesn’t want to do that.
Pepper tucks her hands beneath her knees, but leans in close. He can see the fear in her eyes and Tony feels like an idiot on top of the wash of shame that makes him hot all over. Jesus, it was just a fucking spilled gear or book or something.
“Tony?” Pepper tries again.
“I’m fine,” he says, trying to push himself up on shaking, unsteady legs. “Fine. Just, go away.”
There are very few moments where Pepper really goes in for the whole boss/employee dynamic, but this is one of them. She doesn’t want to leave (in the same way that she also wants to run, Tony can tell) but she does.
*
Tony watches the second hand on the clock sweep around and around. It takes a really, really long time before he feels like his legs are steady enough to hold his weight.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Commentfic, "After the War," Tony Stark, PTSD
Date: 2010-07-16 04:23 am (UTC)I haven't watched the movie in quite a long time, so there is a little bit of me playing fast and loose with the timeline. And hey, it's nice to post this on the right day after getting the timeline mixed up. :D?
The first thing Tony does when he gets back into his lab is rearrange everything.
It takes him the better part of a month to realize that no matter where he’s sitting to work, he can see the door.
*
He adds the additional security codes to get into the lab a little bit after that. Just him, Pepper, Rhodey, and Obadiah.
Pepper cocks her head to the side when Tony tells her. “What are the chances of someone getting past the other house security?”
Tony waves her away, irritated. “If they’re good enough to get past the house security, I think we can assume they’re determined. So, added security. There’s nothing wrong with making it as hard for them as possible.”
Pepper doesn’t say anything else.
*
His first priority is to redesign his own personal power source to something that’s a) not made out of spare parts while in a cave and b) somewhat more aesthetically pleasing. He’s perfectly aware his priorities are not like most people’s and he does, of course, make other improvements. If push comes to shove, he could probably live with something ugly if it kept his heart beating.
When he finishes, he holds the reactor in his hand and stares at it. He waits for the elation, but it doesn’t necessarily come like he was expecting. He’s done what no one else in the entire fucking world could do (because he is a god of engineering and technology) and he should be jazzed.
But whatever, he chalks it up to exhaustion, settles on the chair, and pops the old version out of his chest.
...and he can’t make himself put his hand in and replace it with new reactor.
So he calls up Pepper, has her do it, and tells her to toss the old reactor. He imagines crushing it into a tiny little cube that could be flushed down the toilet, along with all the crap about the fucking cave and the fucking car battery and Yinsen with holes in his chest.
*
The first couple times he has runs of not being able to sleep, Tony honestly doesn’t even notice, because he’s always operated on a sleep schedule dictated by the terms of whatever he was working on. If he needed to plow eighteen hours through, then he did and sleep the sleep of the just when he’d successfully finished the project.
And he is working, of course. First with the reactor in his chest, then with version two of the suit.
A night comes where he’s finished a stage of the new suit and he can’t start working on the next until some hardware arrives. He has a nice dinner with Pepper and unwinds with a couple beers. He’s planning on crashing and hopefully getting back to work the next morning.
When three am comes, he’s laying in bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering why the fuck he can’t get his heart to slow down.
*
The thing is, he sort of expected to have nightmares, in the way that he sure as fuck didn’t tell anyone. What the hell kind of grown man has nightmares?
What he isn’t expecting, is that when he can convince himself to shut down, is just how bad the nightmares turn out to be. Sometimes he’s on fire. Sometimes he’s trapped in the old suit, but it won’t turn on and he can hear the rattatat of gun fire. Sometimes he’s watching Yinsen die.
Tony gets really fucking tired of waking up to sound of his own harsh, strangled breath clawing out of his chest while his heart slams against his ribs and his hands claw at air and bedsheets.
*
Sometimes, in the deadest part of the morning when he’s sitting down in his lab staring at blue prints that he can’t make sense with exhausted eyes, Tony feels like he’s losing his mind. Or maybe he has lost his mind and he’s really still back in the cave and this is his way of escaping.
What’s weird, though, is that he can still get dressed, put on a suit, go smile and shmooze upset investors and have no one know.
He’s a great actor, or something.
*
Here’s the scene. Tony’s working on the second suit, half listening while Pepper almost cheerfully recites the newest numbers fallout from his announcement about Stark Industries. Tony’s repeating that he doesn’t care about the investors, they can go fuck themselves, and Obadiah needs to calm the hell down and trust Tony.
And then something gets knocked over by one of the robots. It’s happened a goddamn thousand times since Tony built the thing, but not since he got back.
And he knows what happened, he knows specifically because it’s happened so many times before. But it doesn’t actually matter in the moment that the loud bang echoes through the lab, because his body’s reaction doesn’t have jackshit to do with his logical mind.
He’s off his chair and on his knees, pressed against the worktable with his heart hammering and bile in the back of his throat. His body is pulsing, shaking with the dump of adrenaline in his system and he feels like his vision is flickering between Pepper rushing across the floor and the cave, like in those old movies.
“Tony?” Pepper lands down beside him.
“Don’t touch me,” he says, because if she does he’ll probably accidentally shove her halfway across the room and he really doesn’t want to do that.
Pepper tucks her hands beneath her knees, but leans in close. He can see the fear in her eyes and Tony feels like an idiot on top of the wash of shame that makes him hot all over. Jesus, it was just a fucking spilled gear or book or something.
“Tony?” Pepper tries again.
“I’m fine,” he says, trying to push himself up on shaking, unsteady legs. “Fine. Just, go away.”
There are very few moments where Pepper really goes in for the whole boss/employee dynamic, but this is one of them. She doesn’t want to leave (in the same way that she also wants to run, Tony can tell) but she does.
*
Tony watches the second hand on the clock sweep around and around. It takes a really, really long time before he feels like his legs are steady enough to hold his weight.