Who: Tony Stark & Edwin Jarvis. What: Sometimes it's good to remember that things can go from bad to worse. Right? Where: Tony's penthouse. When: Right around the time of the President's address.
Slouched up against a small army of throw pillows, his head hanging on the back of the sofa, Tony watched the ceiling change color in the dim, shifting light of the television. The volume was low enough to be inoffensive, but the throbbing in his head persisted all the same - and would have done even if he'd been lying flat in bed in the dark and quiet, probably. It was one of those days when he'd somehow failed to transition past his pyjamas and a robe before sunset, but at least he was out of his bedroom, with a pitcher of one part clear liquor to about six parts thick, syrupy juice standing ready beside him, and a plate of soft, bland, pleasantly buttery, bite-sized somethings on the table where he'd decided to prop his feet. He should eat. He should drink. He should do a lot of things.
He was looking forward to exactly none of them.
The train ride home from District Seven had felt like a death march. Being propelled inevitably forward toward something he did not want to do wasn't exactly a new narrative, as far as his life went, but it wasn't one he'd ever managed to approach with any grace. Resigning himself to what was to come wasn't in his playbook. He'd spent the entire journey alternately pretending that nothing was happening - enjoying the limbo of travel, using every second that he wasn't home yet to full advantage - and desperately searching for some way to solve the problem before he went crashing into it full speed. Fix it, that was his natural impulse. Make it okay. And when he couldn't act, when there was absolutely nothing he could do to change the shit he was about to step in - it drove him crazy. So the solution he'd chosen, obviously, had been: get hammered. He could do that perfectly, no problem, every single time.
And he'd done it very well. He only rememebred sntaches of the trip home from the station, of getting tossed into bed; he'd woken up feeling ... probably somewhere around a seven, on his one to ten scale of how much do I want to die. If nothing else, it had successfully pushed off this highly unpleasant necessity for another twenty-four hours.
But now he was coming around, as he always did. He felt more or less human, aside from the headache. And he had to face the fact that he was still going to have to have this conversation, that the same weight was hanging over him now as had been when he'd left Seven, that it was still making him want to dive right back into a bottle and swim away from it as fast as he could go. He was buzzing with dread, with - some remorse, perhaps. Natasha was right - he shouldn't have said a damn thing to her, and having that conversation once had been miserable, draining, an exercise in nothing but chagrin and raw, uncovered nerves. To have it twice ... Well. He knew beyond a doubt that Jarvis would agree with her. He wasn't looking forward to it. But he also expected it would involve fewer objects chucked in the general vicinity of his head, and in his current state, that was more than a small blessing.
Without looking up, he snagged another little pastry and forced it down. It was best to occupy his mouth as much as possible during these sorts of things. Otherwise - he'd just keep talking.