Lonely (But Not Alone)
25 December 2016
Christmas.
Lonely and alone are two vastly different words. One is a feeling, the other is a status. One can happen even when surrounded by people, the other only when nobody’s around.
In Italian this distinction doesn’t exists. There’s one word for both -solo, which needs to be preceded by the word ‘feeling’ -sentirsi, to mean lonely and the word ‘being’ -essere to mean alone. The distinction between ‘alone’ and ‘lonely’ would therefore need an extra word if translated in Italian as the distinction in itself doesn’t exist. But it should. Because this two words are completely different in meaning.
For example
Surprisingly enough, Tony had never been alone for Christmas.
Sure, it had always been a hard time for Tony. When he was a child, it was because, seeing his peers happy and ecstatic and eagerly waiting for the presents and the food and the obvious proof of love, the insistent reminders that his parents didn’t care about him worsened, becoming an unavoidable reality instead of the nagging feeling he had the rest of the year.
His mamma would at least try, with fake smiles and even faker laughs. She would pretend they were a happy little family, cook and force them to smile and have dinner together. She would start the dinner with a glass of wine, that, as Howard’s verbal jabs started digging deeper and deeper as the evening went, became two, then three and then became a bottle.
Still, he wasn’t alone thanks to his parents being alive and Jarvis and Ana, who, despite knowing Howard would punish them harshly if he found out about it, sneaked in some little presents he could hide easily in the hole in his bathroom. They were never shiny or elegant or expansive as the presents Obi used to give him at the Christmas charity galas. But they were funny or sweet or simply kind and most importantly they were undeniably theirs.
And then when he was fourteen Ana died early in December, the cancer finally catching up to her. And then Jarvis died the 24 of December, joining his wife barely three weeks after her. And then, three years later Maria and Howard both died in December, officially making Christmas a reminder of what he lost and what he never had nor could have. A family.
And yet, even then, he wasn’t alone. With Rhodey and Mama Rhodes inviting him every year for the holidays, he never was alone. But then Rhodey signed up in the military, and he was rarely home for Christmas. But then again, not alone. By then he had Obie and Pepper at his side. And then just Pepper, and, sometimes, Rhodey.
But here comes the distinction.
While Tony didn’t mind being alone, as alone meant silence and being able to focus on his projects, he was rarely truly alone. Be it for Jarvis and Ana, Pepper and Rhodey, Obi, his AIs and his bots, or the random people who were around him every day, Tony had never truly been alone.
Still, the fact that he wasn’t alone didn’t mean he wasn’t lonely. He was, in fact, very lonely. Most of all at Christmas. Because you can be lonely even when surrounded by hundreds of people, and even though Tony wasn’t surrounded by hundreds of people, but barely two, he still felt very much lonely. He didn’t know why, exactly. He did have Rhodey and Pepper, and he knew they cared about him. But he was lonely. No matter who or how many people were around him, he just felt so lonely.
The feeling was almost constant, a deep thrumming in his chest, sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger. A pain which, every Christmas, turned into squeezing claws around his chest, constricting his lungs, making them stutter and stop every now and then, when the ‘Bad Thoughts’ as he dubbed them made themselves known. During the rest of the year he had learned to ignore the loneliness, but on Christmas. On Christmas it would tear him apart and crush him under its weight.
The Bad Thoughts didn’t help either. They too were bearable during the rest of the year, a whisper in the back of his head, constant but easy enough to ignore. But on Christmas they would join the feeling of loneliness, and from a mere whisper, they would become a scream, insistent and impossible to ignore.
So, yeah, while he did have feelings of loneliness and Bad Thoughts during the whole year, he had learned to live with them to the point they were mostly white noise, a weight he learned to bear, an itch he stopped scratching.
And Christmas was the day they would come back with a vengeance, trying to squeeze his lungs and crush his heart. They made Christmas a day he dreaded, a day he despised and loathed. A day in which panic attacks and flashbacks had free reign over his body and mind.
And then the Avengers were there, giving him people to fully rely on.
Yes, he had Rhodey, but he was gone more often than not. And Pepper, beautiful, kind Pepper. She was always there. But in a way, she wasn’t. The rift born between them was created long before Ultron. It had started with Iron Man.
So, the Avengers. They gave Christmas a new meaning besides the loss and loneliness he had come to know until then. Giving him what he thought he couldn’t have after Jarvis and Ana. Family. At least to him. He loved them all, like they were his own brothers and sisters. He loved all their little quirks and details
He loved the way Bruce would hum when he was cooking, or the way Natasha, try as she might, couldn’t help but smile at Clint’s jokes. He loved the little doodles Steve drew on the side of the mission reports’ pages or the way Wanda would rant for hours about how she hated Disney movies and yet was there every single time they would watch one. He loved how Thor got comfortable enough to share his tragedies with them and stop faking to always be happy and how big Vision’ eyes would get with wonder every time he discovered something new. He loved Clint’ stupid jokes and how Sam would change his voice higher or lower to interpret each person in the story he was telling.
But he knew, he knew they would never care about him as he did them. He knew he was far from perfect, and he knew they knew it too. And he had accepted it, really. The rest of the year
But on Christmas, he let himself hope. Hope that they would come to accept him. Hope that they would at least not hate him.
And when Christmas came, it almost looked like they did care about him, at least a little. Laughing with him instead than at him and giving him side hugs, letting him be a part of their family. Giving him presents he couldn’t buy. Presents that were sweet or funny or simply kind, and, most importantly, undeniably theirs. It reminded him so much of Jarvis and Ana’s presents, that he started to put them in the secret room in his bathroom like he did back then.
And so he got comfortable in the cozy warmth of the Avengers team, forgetting all about his fears of being left alone with his Bad Thoughts and the how utterly cold his loneliness was, believing fervently that there would always be the Avengers. He was so sure that they wouldn’t leave him like everyone else.
And yet, there he was, all alone on Christmas, staring intently at the bloody knife clutched in his trembling fingers, Bad Thoughts swirling through his head. He felt like he should laugh at some sort of twisted joke he hadn’t yet come up with.
But he was too tired to laugh. He just wanted to sleep… just wanted to sleep
He felt almost numb, if it weren’t for the crushing weight of what he had just done. He was neck deep in the quicksand that were Bad Thoughts, so much so that he barely heard the bots beeping worriedly just outside the door.
But he felt too tired to even reassure them. He was too tired to do anything by this point.
He was barely able to breathe and move his limbs, feeling his face drain of all color, dizziness taking over.
And, no matter how high he raised the shower’s temperature, water scalding and skin reddening… he was cold. Teeth clattering and hands trembling kind of cold. He hadn’t felt this cold since... Siberia. And no, it wasn’t for the snow or the wind or the lowering temperatures. It was because he had just realized he was alone. They had left him. All of them. He was alone. It was like with Jarvis and Ana again. Just, this time, they had left him willingly. Because he had messed up. It was his fault. He deserved to die alone, depressed and guilt ridden.
But then F.R.I.D.A.Y. came, piloting a suit to Siberia, saving him. And he lived, just barely, arc reactor back in his chest and the pain with it. And he tried being okay. He tried smiling and he tried snarking away his problems and he tried building things but- it- it just wasn’t- it felt wrong. And as time passed, he realized how messed up, how broken and weak he was.
He couldn’t even smile without feeling how unnatural it was on his face. He tried making it feel normal, practicing in front of a mirror, feeling his lips stretch in an almost painful way, but the wrongness of it just didn’t fade away like he had hoped. And the more he tried, the more his checks hurt, the more his eyes darkened in tiredness, the more he lost hope in ever smiling honestly again.
He couldn’t even use sarcasm as a defense mechanism like he had always done, cause it just didn’t come out right. It just felt wrong on his tongue, leaving a sour taste behind. And most of the time all that came to mind were self-deprecating jokes. He tried acting normally with the press, but every time he went out to talk to them nothing came to mind, as he didn’t have the will to speak anymore, wanting to just stay silent and keep quiet as opposed to his talkative self. He kept his answers brief and to the point, wanting to just go back to the calm and stillness of his compound.
And he couldn’t build. He tried to, he really did. But other than Rhodey’s braces, he just- he couldn’t. He didn’t have any ideas, didn’t feel the need to build or to keep his mind busy. He felt like his mind went slower than usual. His thoughts felt muddy, like they were underwater. He didn’t feel like building anymore. And that, most of all scared him shitless. He wasn’t Tony Stark without his ideas and his tech. He didn’t know who he was anymore.
So, there he was, still depressed, still drowning in guilt and loneliness, red slowly pouring out of his wrists.
He was alone at Christmas for the first time
And it was so, so cold