Chapter 4
JARVIS had been disabled.
Usually, that didn’t worry Steve too much. Sometimes Tony took him down for regular upgrades or review of code, or sometimes had a project that would require lots of resources and JARVIS just didn’t have the bandwidth to operate such a task and be functional throughout the rest of the building. But knowing that Tony wasn’t working on anything (and was actually actively preventing himself from working) worried Steve. He did a careful sweep of Tony’s floor, but found no one; so he went back to the common floor kitchen to prepare tea to calm his nerves.
Just as he was about to round the corner to the kitchen, he saw Tony lying with his back on the couch in the living area with his hands covering his face. He stopped in his tracks.
“Tony,” Steve said carefully, walking slowly towards him as if he would explode or run away.
There was a pause filled by Tony’s ragged breaths. “I’m not doing well.”
“I know.”
Tony sat up, looked briefly at Steve, then brought his attention to his wringing hands in his lap. “I can’t stop thinking. Maybe I should kill myself. That would be the only way to make sure I don’t build anything. I can't keep myself away. I need to build. I can’t build. I can only build weapons.”
Steve walked closer, his arm outstretched. “Tony-”
“Don’t touch me.”
Steve stopped, his hand still in the air.
“They were right. A potential threat to mankind is all I am,” Tony spat. “Why did you stop them?”
“Because they were going to kill you and thousands of others,” Steve said quickly, easily. “It’s my job to keep the world safe.”
“You’re endangering it by keeping me alive.” There was a slur to his words. He swayed a little and seemed to have trouble keeping his eyes open.
“Stop thinking like that,” Steve said sharply, then added: “Are you drunk?”
“Steve, I’m not- I’m not doing well,” Tony said instead of answering.
“I know. I'm sorry.”
“It’s hard. I’m a danger. It’s better if I just die, yeah?”
Steve shook his head, his heart pounding in his ears. Panic rose in his throat and he fought hard to keep calm, only the slightest waver left present in his voice.. “No. Trust me, Tony. It won’t be better.”
“Why? Give me one good reason.”
Steve swallowed hard. His answer would have too much impact on Tony while he was like this; open and vulnerable. His choice of words could mean life or death, and he desperately wanted Tony to live.
How had it gotten to this point? To the point where Tony was openly suicidal, sick, and a mess in general? How had Steve let it go this far? He thought he was doing everything right; he benched him, looked for him when he went missing for too long, cared for him and encouraged him to get the help he needed- so how had it come to this? How had he missed the signs? It had started with the casual suicidal ideation; and now he was desperately asking Steve for a reason to live. Somewhere along the way they had all fucked it up and just watched from the sidelines as their friend went through a steady decline.
And what a question. There were times when Steve asked himself the same thing, and it always came down to one reason:
“Who else is going to save the world, if not us?” Steve settled for saying, his voice tight.
Tony nodded, his breath stuttering. He looked up at the ceiling then down to his hands. “Anyway. I took a few handfuls of sleeping pills.”
“Tony!” Steve exclaimed, taking large steps over his friend and kneeling beside him. “You could’ve started with that!”
“Get them out. I fucked up,” Tony whimpered, leaning against Steve, holding onto his shirt, holding on for his life. ”I tried throwing them up. I can't.”
“Okay. Okay. Okay.” Steve scrambled to gather his thoughts, his head was clouded with panic and adrenaline. “Let's go to medical. Come on.”
Steve grabbed Tony’s arm and threw it over his shoulders; Tony’s head was drooping, unstable on his neck, and at random times his knees would buckle and Steve would be supporting his entire body weight. But still, Steve dragged his friend to the elevator. “Keep talking, Tony.”
“I fucked up,” Tony said, his voice barely a whisper.
“That’s known,” Steve said, ignoring the shake in his voice. “Keep talking. Come on.”
But Tony’s head fell again and Steve stumbled under the sudden dead weight. Instead of trying to readjust his footing like the times before, Tony was… still.
No no no no nonono. Steve scanned his card and the elevator was overridden, making no stops. He pressed the button for the medical floor.. “JARVIS, tell medical we’re coming.”
Nothing. Steve’s panic built until he felt it radiate from his core to every limb, and every finger and leg was shaking.The elevator was too slow and it was all Steve could do to keep Tony in his arms with his trembling limbs. Steve didn’t dare check whether Tony was breathing or not; not when he was alone with him, not when no one else was going for help. He was too scared. He didn’t want to shut down.
“Help!” Steve screamed into an empty hallway as soon as the doors opened. “Anyone!”
He barreled down the dim hallway, towards the offices, but it was a weekend and no one had been called in, and it was late at night, the odds that anyone was around was slim to none-
A door opened.
“Oh thank God,” Steve gasped out, still holding Tony’s body bridal-style in his arms. He thrust his hands out as if presenting Tony to the doctor. “He overdosed on sleeping pills.”
Helen Cho’s face turned to professional stone as she pressed a beeper and directed Steve to place Tony on a bed while she prepped a dose of activated charcoal. She grabbed an orogastric tube from a sterile storage cabinet and turned to Steve. “You might not want to see this.”
Steve shook his head, his mouth filling with saliva. He felt sick.
“Steve. Leave. I can’t treat both of you at once if you go into shock,” she said more firmly, holding Tony’s mouth open with one hand and the tube in the other, her back to Steve so she was kind of blocking his view.
“Is anyone else coming?” Steve blurted out in response, his words coming out in one quick noise that sounded unintelligible to even his own ears.
“Yes, I paged my team.”
That was all Steve needed to hear. He rushed out of the room, pulling out his phone with his still shaking fingers, feeling like he was about to dry-heave. He sat down in a lounge area, and opened up Bruce’s contact.
Tony just overdosed. I’m at medical. Dr Cho is taking care of him.
Steve stared at his phone as the read receipt popped up. He stared at his phone as a notification popped up in the team group chat, sent by Bruce, and he continued to stare at his phone until his legs stopped feeling so much like jello and his arms stopped feeling so heavy. A noise to his left made him finally look up.
“Hi.”
“Natasha.”
She looked strangely upset. She nodded and sat down in the chair furthest from Steve, her arms crossed defensively over her chest.
Bruce showed up next along with Clint and Thor. They all took their seats, the room quiet and somber. Clint was throwing Steve the odd glare, clearly still not over their last fight. Thor was looking up at the ceiling, deep in thought. Natasha and Bruce both shared the same empty stare.
Steve didn’t feel so sick anymore; enough time had passed that he could trust himself to open his mouth without vomiting. “Should we talk about it?”
Clint glared at him.
Steve nodded, guilt settling back in his throat, and silence fell over them all again.
--
Helen Cho appeared in the doorway a good hour later, her posture all professional but her eyes held worry. “He’s stable.”
Steve looked up hopefully. Clint read her expression. “But?”
“Well,” she said, “stable just means that his condition isn’t deteriorating.”
“Technically a dead person could be stable then,” Clint said with a shrug.
“Clint,” Steve said sharply.
“Just saying.”
“He’s not breathing on his own, and he’s in a medically-induced coma. Take that as you will,” she said sourly. “I will give updates as he progresses.”
She left. Clint seemed angry, and got up as well, leaving the room in a huff. Natasha followed without a word.
“The eye of the hawk seems a little unsettled,” Thor remarked.
“I think we all are,” Bruce said, sighing. “Emotions are high right now.”
Thor nodded. “Inform me of his waking.”
He left. Just Bruce and Steve were left sitting in those same chairs, directly opposite from each other, tension radiating off the two in waves. The fluttery, panicky feeling returned in Steve’s chest as he waited for Bruce to say the first words.
“What do you know?” Bruce asked, looking at Steve with sad but sharp eyes.
“He seems to agree with HYDRA. About the whole elimination thing,” Steve answered, the words blocky in his mouth. “But only about himself.”
“Glad he doesn’t want me dead,” Bruce said with an air of humour. “After all, I was labeled as a threat as well.”
“You’re doing much better than him,” Steve pointed out.
“Yes,” Bruce sighed, as if he’d thought about it a lot. “However, I’ve long accepted the fact that I’m a threat.”
“Tony told me that he had lots of experience with people telling him to kill himself. Just now, there’s logic behind it. That’s what he said,” Steve recited, thinking, with a dreadful feeling, how obvious of a cry for help that was. Steve had been so stupid to let Tony be on his own after that. And who was telling him that he should do something as awful as killing himself? He felt sick again.
“It’s stupid logic. But Tony is a futurist. Honestly, he’s probably offended that he didn’t think of it first,” Bruce said, cutting through Steve’s thoughts.
He shook his head, almost horrified at the thought. “Tony would never agree to making an algorithm like that.”
“No. But he thought himself infallible, yeah?” Bruce said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, staring Steve dead in the eye. “And he just came face-to-face with reality. People fail all the time.”
“And so he tried to kill himself?” Steve asked incredulously, the words sour on his tongue.
“Sometimes that just seems like the only option left,” Bruce said quietly.
Steve went silent. It shouldn’t have come to this. It shouldn’t have come to Tony in a hospital bed because he didn’t see a way out. Because he only saw himself as a weapon and felt like his inevitable fate was to destroy the world. It shouldn’t have come to this.
“He did try to distance himself from the lab,” Steve told Bruce. “He told me to tell him to stay away from it, that he was dangerous.”
“Tony asked me to do that too,” Bruce said, nodding. “Naturally, I refused. He’s not a danger.”
Steve looked up sharply, remembering who else was to be terminated. “And neither are you.”
Bruce smiled at him. “That can be argued. Let’s not do it now.”
Steve nodded, staring at the blank wall to his right.
“Tony likes validation,” Bruce explained. “As soon as you say something that goes against what he believes himself to be, he believes you.”
Steve remembered that one instance ages ago, the instance that might have started this whole fiasco. “Is that why he reacted so badly when Nat..?”
“I’d assume so,” Bruce said, shrugging. “When he wakes up, you can ask.”
Steve sat up straighter, then slumped. “I don’t think he’d want to talk to me.”
“You can ask him that too.”
“Why are you so calm about this?” Steve blurted out, sprawling his hands out in front of him, almost admiring how shaky they were. “I feel like my heart is going to beat out of my chest.”
“It’s either calm or a monster.”
Steve nodded. Bruce’s temperament was incredible.
“You should get out of here,” he said. “You’re freaked out. Go take a walk, clear your head, think about it, and come back.”
Steve remembered something, and he stood up. “I have to go get something before he wakes up.”
Bruce nodded. “I’ll text you.”
But Steve was already out the door.