Tony Stark (in_extremis) wrote in oh_marvelous, @ 2011-02-24 14:36:00 |
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Step 12
Characters: Tony, and open to Steve and Cassie and probably other Tower people.
Setting: Avengers Tower, middle of the night.
Content: This is kind of suicidal.
Summary: Tony's going to finally do something good for himself.
With bare feet, his toes could curl over the ledge, making him waver with a breath shaky either from the sight before him or the relentless chill. It was a steep, uninterrupted, 94-story plunge from the floodlit roof to the icy, dark, cement floor of the plaza. The winter wind this high up, without the insulation of the summer gardens, cut through his t-shirt like death, carried his frosty breath away in a chaotic swirl, and threatened to push him from his perch if he wouldn't make the first move. He tried to force a steady puff of air from his lungs, shaking the tension from his hands, and drag his gaze away from the distant base of Stark Tower. Tony always wanted to fly. It wasn't a whole lot different from falling.
It was his birthday tomorrow. Not a good day to celebrate. Somewhere else, a father would be giving a speech in tribute to the daughter he lost in the tragedy the year before, for all of those people who had lost someone themselves, or been wounded, or never recovered. He would stand where Stark Enterprises had paid to rebuild the convention center as a memorial, like so many other buildings in the city were. Tony told himself when he put the Iron Man on a decade ago that he could see and would create a future where people didn't die in war. He created his own war, and he wasn't ten steps ahead anymore. He had spent a year letting it overtake him.
He should have been standing here a year ago. Everything was already so fucked up then, and it would only get worse because he pussied out and picked up the bottle instead. He couldn't even do this right. He had known, for this whole, crazy ride that he wasn't even worth it. Everyone knew it. He knew, with painful, relived clarity, how thoroughly he had destroyed anyone who didn't have the sense to leave him when they had the chance (he swallowed, forcing away the nauseous lurch at the memory of the Iron Man in his head, reexperiencing every one of his failures, shaking out his hands again, telling himself, 'Just one step,' and that would be behind him). But just this year...
Pepper, Happy, Pietro, Wanda, Jessica, Elektra, Nick, Cassie, Raven, three thousand families on February 25th, six continents in May and Steve (he touched his tongue to his lip, finding them dry in the wind, then passed his hand over his mouth and kept it a fist at his side). They all deserved so much better. It could have all been fixed if Tony had just done this a long time ago. One more step. Eyes on the clear sky and not on the ground below.