In Situ : End [Hic situs est] Characters: Tony Stark, Nick, Raven, Pietro, Wanda and Clint. Setting:Backdated to a little after this. S.H.I.E.L.D. medical bay, New York City. Content: A bit of a scuffle. Summary: Now that he's a bit more himself, Tony gets a chance to talk to some of the people he nearly killed. This should go well.
The nurses-- if that was what you could call them, more like highly trained espionage and combat experts who just happened to have expert and occasionally experimental medical training-- kept telling him to sleep, like it was easy. They had that look on their faces, like he was just being difficult, when they said, "You should really sleep, Mr. Stark," every, what felt like, three days, which was probably more like twelve seconds. He replied, "Call me Tony." When finally he or she would acquiece, they were relieved by someone new who every twelve seconds or three days would say, "You should really sleep, Mr. Stark."
It should have been easy, but it never really was, and it just became harder. At first he had struggled against it; not the sleep, but the inevitability that sleep was all he was allowed. The cuff they had fastened around his ankle to keep him from killing anyone else, Tony assumed, was "Shi'ar technology," as he had been told, "used to inhibit telepaths." Thing was, Tony wasn't a telepath. There must have been some way around it. There must have been some way to break this dam of silence and slowness and stupidity. He was in a hospital, they weren't supposed to make him feel heavy and sick.
Without Extremis, he stared blankly up at the ceiling, searching for it and struggling to focus otherwise. He could still calculate without it. He could still design without it. Why was it so hard? The chains that kept his arms fastened (to keep him, also, from killing anyone else, Tony assumed) jangled when he made a frustrated jerk, alerting the guard the slouched, without anyone's watchful eye in the deserted hall, just outside his door. The man straightened abruptly at the sound and peered in, eyebrow raised inquisitively.
"Gotta take a leak," Tony explained, to a roll of the eyes from his bored guard before the man slouched over to release him.
He didn't know how long he was restricted to visits from the doctors and nurses for his entertainment. The switching from the bright white light of the hospital to what really wasn't a soothing dim yellow seemed to be arbitrary, for stretches of seconds or decades, Tony really couldn't tell. He probably wasn't there for more than a couple days, though. S.H.I.E.L.D. might have been completely useless, but at least Nick should have come by before Tony turned forty to tell him how much of a complete fuck up he was. Nick couldn't deny himself that pleasure for very long.
Until he did find the time, though, Tony stared up at the ceiling and couldn't sleep.