most people feel pain violently, their pain is loud and obnoxious and bold.
it’s heart wrenching sobs and feral screams.
pain is vivid, powerful, angry. it is all encompassing and fiery. pain is a flurry that cannot be suppressed, a tide that cannot be held back.
but for tony stark pain is silent, noiseless and still. pain is icy and hard and awful.
tony stark is not overcome by pain. he is pain.
he buries it deep within him, where it burns and festers and grows, but he doesn’t allow it to be seen.
to tony stark, pain is existence.
his entire life has been forged by betrayal and heartache and loss.
he knows pain intimately.
it is not loud and full and hot.
it is quiet and empty and cold.
it is his father’s low, harsh reprimands, berating him into silence.
it is the suffocating black suit he wore to his parents’ funeral, holding back tears and choking on his breath, burdened by loss and the weight of a legacy he must continue.
it is the gaping hole in his chest left by obadiah’s betrayal, his heart both literally and figuratively torn apart, empty.
it is the quiet click of the door as pepper walks out, unable to handle him, unable to deal with his mess any longer.
it is the whistle of the wind as he flies forward to catch his best friend as he falls, knowing he won’t get there in time and yet trying anyways.
it is the final thud of a shield to the chest as his childhood hero, former friend, former teammate, leaves him for dead.
it is the bitterness of whiskey as it slides down his throat at 3 am, when he is tinkering in his workshop unable to sleep and unwilling to try, promising himself just one more update, and knowing it’s a lie.
it is his shaking hands and shuddering breaths as he tries to suppress an anxiety attack because heroes shouldn’t be afraid, they shouldn’t show weakness.
it is the fear and abandonment he’s felt since childhood, the aching guilt and burning grief he’s known all his life.
the pain tony stark knows isn’t sudden and violent and cruel.
rather it is empty and silent and deep. it doesn’t eat at him, picking towards his core. it is his core. and so when tony experiences pain he doesn’t yell, he doesn’t shout, he doesn’t scream. he doesn’t let out an anguished cry.
instead he freezes, he stills, he turns away, he shuts his eyes, he denies reality. he buries it, suppresses it.
he might weep silently, he might tremble.
but he doesn’t let out a sound.
you see, tony stark isn’t overcome by passion or overwhelmed by emotion.
instead he is consumed by darkness, enshrouded by silence, emptied by loss.
so when they lose the battle, lose half the universe, fail in every respect, tony stark freezes.
when his kid falls into his arms and begs him to save him, begs him to help him, tony stark doesn’t comfort, he silences.
when his protégée and mentee, his child, crumbles in his arms, when he loses the closest thing he’s ever had to a kid, tony stark falls apart.
he doesn’t yell into the abyss or storm at the sky. he doesn’t rage at the universe for what it took, for what stole.
instead he swears to it, instead he makes a promise, an oath, in his head. he swears to the universe that he will get him back, that he will make things right.
& he doesn’t wait for an answer, doesn’t wait to see the universe’s response.
tony stark may freeze, he may still, he may silence. but he is a force to be reckoned with. his entire existence is built from pain, but he knows how to wield that pain to his advantage.
he can forge a sword out of loss, a shield out of betrayal, armor out of heartache.
and so when the universe takes his child he vows to strike back.
tony stark may know pain, it might shape him and form him and drive him. but it does not define him.
like a phoenix from the ashes tony stark will rise.
he will recover. he always does.
tony stark is a man of iron, a hero of metal, a mortal of armor. and tony stark will get his child back.