Jarvis' discomfort wasn't difficult to pick out - even out of the corner of his eye, Tony could see the averted gaze, the general drawing-back that came from this one particularly loathsome stimulus. Even if it hadn't given him a pang - and it did - it wasn't as though he himself felt that differently; and so he fished around beside him for the remote. "Sure does. Which means we can read about it tomorrow. I'm having enough trouble keeping my dinner down, without ..."
But then that box caught his eye, and he trailed off, his hand curling around the remote but not going so far as to lift it - and he listened. The symbols and other trappings surrounding the Quell brought back quite a lot of memories, of course. They weren't the sharp, stinging recollections that came from things he'd experienced in the moment as painful, or frightening; the last time one of those cards had been read, he'd been on the edge of his seat, thrilled, ready for a twist, and ultimately beyond excited to be running full-speed into the biggest field the Games had ever seen and convinced in every way that he was going to blow it right out of the water. Now, to be sure, it was tinged with something else, something more sinister, but - it was still arresting. And this wouldn't take long. It was just one card.
He was right: it didn't take long at all.
And after it was read, after the card and its little envelope had been deposited back on the podium, Tony just kept watching. If Stane was still saying anything, he wasn't really listening; he'd more or less forgotten that he had the control in his hand, that he could have turned it off. Existing pool of victors. That was it - that was him. It should have meant - it did mean quite a lot of things, the implications were numerous and far-reaching: the fight they'd just begun, the sentiment building slowly throughout the entire country, the questions he'd just started to ask, the risks he'd taken, the risk they'd both taken. It was a blow to all of those, and it struck at so much more besides, but he was thinking about none of that - he wasn't even thinking about the more immediate concerns (how many were there, still living, in Five? what was his shot?). He just felt - claustrophobic. That familiar, low-level pressure settled in around him, as though the walls had bent inward just slightly, the room had grown that much smaller. A weight dropped somewhere just below his throat and stayed.
He didn't move, really. His brows drew sharply together for a moment, as though someone had flashed a light in his face, before slowly relaxing; his hand moved up to his chest to rub, sluggishly, absently, at his reactor. He exhaled - heavy, and a little unsteady - and didn't seem inclined to move to breathe in again. He seemed to have nothing to say, which was likely because he had nothing to think - just a lot of nothing.
He did, at least, have just enough presence of mind to recognize that - well. That's fucking appropriate, isn't it.