Part 2 - Chp 6
Problem--Tony Stark has never meditated a day in his life. Altered states don’t count when they involve blackout drunk (which he’s not a fan of reaching anymore anyway), and trying to sit down and zen is nearly impossible with everything that demands his attention.
It’s infuriating.
Trying to lucid dream is, somehow, worse. The idea of going to bed when he’s not exhausted is utterly foreign, and the only dreams he manages to have are disjointed things that he can’t remember come morning.
Silence happens to other people; Tony’s been fine with that forever but suddenly it’s a problem.
“It takes practice,” Bruce says. “It’s only been two weeks.”
Two weeks out of seventy-eight they have before the aliens are at Earth. Great. Fabulous. Because that’s promising.
“This is stupid,” Tony says, but he keeps trying.
***
The first time Tony manages to actually get his headspace quiet, he nearly gets scared out of his damn skin when the alarm goes off.
“Seriously,” Tony snarls, trying to get his heart to slow down, lividly angry in a way that feels like being set on fire. It’s so raw.
The problem is the world doesn’t stop, and as he flies out to deal with… fucking fish people, what is this Lovecraft, he’s swearing at no one in particular. This is so damn stupid. He’s going to stop, absolutely--he’s not making progress, and he still feels out of sorts from the sudden yank back from the quiet, the sensory overload of the suit and his teammates’ voices in one ear, Jarvis in the other, trying to follow everything and he can’t—
He doesn’t know what hits him, only knows suddenly he’s hitting the water. He gets control again, skims under the surface for a few moments, and comes back up, spinning around to fire a shot off at the frankly too large octopus waving a tentacle at him menacingly.
This is so damn stupid.
The tentacle gets blown off, which is great minus his brain is too scrambled to realize that one of the multitude of flashing lights is a warning about a threat behind him, to hear Jarvis in his ear trying to alert him--it’s all too damn much—
He feels something slam into his back, wrap around, and then he’s under the water. He can’t move, though he gives it a good go, feels the seams of the suit creaking and there’s water getting in. He sucks in air just before it covers his head, feels water go up his nose and tries not to choke.
He’s drowning, there’s voice screaming at him in a language he doesn’t know, he’s going to—
He gasps, water flooding his mouth, his lungs. He kicks, tries to pull his head up and out of the water, but the hold on him is too tight, too much, and he can’t think, can’t breathe-can’t breathe-can’t brea—
Tony.