AN: I don't own any of this. Except the specific combination of letters you are about to read.

"Sir, may I point out that the sun will be coming up in approximately forty-one minutes?"

He may, of course, and he just has, and Tony's not about to go reprogramming him to stop caring about his well-being. That would be spending way too much time on the issue that he's thus far managed to convince himself is not an issue at all. This is a setup he can deal with. JARVIS drops a usually polite, sometimes sarcastic, mention every once in a while of health and sleep and safety and crap like that, Tony steadfastly ignores it, and JARVIS doesn't press him further. It's fine. He's fine.

No matter how little success he's had in convincing anyone else of this fact.

Maybe he should go to bed, after all. At least so he can pretend to be sleeping when Pepper gets up.

It's two weeks now since the Battle of New York. Two weeks of nothing but press conferences and cleanup. The city's a mess. He keeps his eyes on the ground every second he can get away with it, because the alternative is risking looking up at the sky, and it's a reasonable excuse given that that ground is full of debris and Chitauri carcasses. And… no small amount of human bodies as well. So many streets are closed off, so many jobs have been lost, so many… so many lives destroyed.

He'll never admit it, but it's obvious to everyone that the endless work and attention with no time for sleep is taking a toll on him. He's not even sharing these circumstances with the other Avengers; of them, he's the only one who's really public with his work, and the battle occurred right on his doorstep. He'd almost be glad that he has an excuse not to sleep as often as his doctor would recommend if he, you know, had a doctor, except that it really is hell. He's subject to human limitations and that means that when he needs to shut his body down but he's still walking around and trying to act like he's still whole, something's wrong in a way that he can't ignore. As much as he wishes that weren't so.

Sometimes, more often than he realized at first, he'll use phrases like that when speaking to Pepper—like "I gotta shut down" or "I need to recharge" or "I'm running on empty."

Invariably, Pepper will respond, voice full of concern he doesn't want, "Tony, you're not a machine."

And he always comes back with, "It's just an expression, sweetheart."

And it is. But he almost wishes it weren't. Machines wouldn't be having these kinds of problems.

The new projects and renovations he and Pepper are now constantly working on provide a fantastic distraction, not to mention an excuse to spend a lot of time with her.

Every time she looks at him or speaks to him he can read the worry in the tense of her jaw, the knot between her brows, the timbre of her voice, even if she's just asking if he wants coffee or letting him know she might have to leave a little early today. After a while he gets used to it to the point of not wondering about it anymore, but he doesn't get past noticing it every single freaking time.

Some part of him seems to think that it should feel good to have someone care enough about him to worry, but then he makes the mistake of thinking about it even further, and he realizes that she probably worries about him on her own time, too, and he does not deserve to be a distraction from her work.

He then realizes that she's off building images of a broken Tony Stark in need of vigilant attention and gentle care, and as long as he won't talk about any of this, which damn well isn't going to change, he can't monitor those images. He can't convince himself that his regret at being a distraction to her is of greater concern to him than this. And following that, he also can't deny what a selfish asshole he is.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

It's the first time she's asked him this. She waited almost three weeks, no doubt hoping he'd open up on his own. It's not something it ever even occurred to him to do until now. He's okay with that.

He knew without thinking what she was referring to when she said "it," but for a moment he tries to convince himself there are multiple possibilities. He's been sitting in their workroom on the top floor of Stark Tower, just staring ahead. He hasn't gone out on the balcony since… since the incident. Pepper did, once, and beckoned him to join her, but he just shook his head until she came back inside.

Just knowing that it happened directly above him, even though there's a roof and several hundred feet between him and the exact spot, is often enough to make him edgy.

She's still waiting for an answer. "About what?" he asks, trying for all he's worth to sound casual.

She stares at him, and nods pointedly upward.

He banishes the short-lived notion of acting genuinely surprised, and instead just goes back to what he was doing, turning his back to her. He doesn't know how to look at her. "Ah," he says. "That."

He hoped that if he just didn't go on after this, she would let it rest, and even talk about something else. But the air is heavy with expectation and he can't ignore it no matter how much he wishes he could. For an insane moment he almost considers powering down his blowtorch to have an actual conversation with her.

Tony stares down at the tiny blue flame, and it bears so little similarity to what he saw rippling through empty space, but somehow it's enough, and he's back in a place between worlds, outside of anything he's ever known, anything he still knows.

Maybe he's seeing it everywhere just because he doesn't understand it at all. His brain can't compare it to anything, and entirely avoiding thinking about it isn't an option, so it just shows up everywhere. Maybe he'll never get away from it for as long as he lives.

He blinks. He doesn't think he's shown any physical signs of distress. (Why would he? What distress? He's fine.) "No, I'm good," he hears himself saying, and the words sound hollow even to him.

He's not positioned to see Pepper sag in dismay, but somehow he still experiences all the guilt that would come with it.

He knows he's supposed to be fine with this.

He's allowed to talk about it, even encouraged by the people who truly care, along with the people who pretend to, but the thing is, he's also very much expected to put it aside, to square his shoulders, to face another day. The paradox that these idiots don't realize is that he is supposed to be bothered enough to need to open up about it, but not enough for it to affect his performance the next time the world is on the cusp of destruction.

It's total bullshit, is what it is.

If he wanted to talk, he knows Pepper would listen, and he knows she gets worried every time he puts the suit on even when it's just to make a modification to Stark Tower. And whenever he's telling Rhodey about his newest projects, the guy unconsciously adopts this concerned, knowing look that frankly pisses Tony off with its similarities to what he imagines a parent would look like while talking to his smart but troubled kid about his disappointing report card.

He doesn't let himself try to find a pattern with what annoys him about the way he's treated since New York—most of the world expects him to truck on and be ready to suit up and save the world at a moment's notice, and that makes him want to hide in a hole, while those two do want him to let it out and stop being Iron Man for a while, and that makes him want to put on the suit and never emerge from its shell.

It goes beyond a feeling of safety, of comfort. It's integral. It's who he is. He's realizing this more and more every day, and every time he thinks about it he's more comfortable with it.

He's not just Tony Stark anymore. He's something else. Something more.

Screw who he used to be. This is a good thing. It has to be.

He wakes up screaming one night, stars wheeling before his eyes, the shadows of an enormous explosion rippling through empty space still flickering in front of him until all went dark.

Pepper's awake, of course she is, he woke her up like he woke himself up. She's already grasping his shoulders, pressing herself against his back, and he lets himself melt into her arms, gasping, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

She's speaking, her tones equal portions panicked and reassuring, and he doesn't know what to make of it. The silence of empty space is still roaring in his head.

He remembers a time when he couldn't sleep without feeling his head forced underwater, seeing vast stretches of sand, sparks lighting up a dark cave, Yinsen's face as he lay dying… tiny shards of metal swimming around his chest.

They died down in frequency, but they never really went away. And soon they were joined by more—dreams of paralysis, betrayal, soul-crushing guilt. Hell, he's got so much baggage it's amazing this space business is… is coming up so much. But it's pretty much crowded out everything else.

Everything else is insignificant compared to what he saw up there.

What the hell is he still so afraid of? He's back on the ground, he's in one piece, at least physically…

He snorts softly. Whose idea was it that if you see something that becomes so pervasive you think about it all the time when you're awake, you get to experience it in all its uncensored glory when you're sleeping, too? What the hell benefit does humanity garner from having recurring nightmares?

He realizes he's started quieting down. Pepper's lightly stroking his sweaty hair—she's stopped talking, too. She wants him to tell her about what he saw. She desperately wants to try the one thing she can do that might begin to help. He knows full well, and he knows she deserves to have some understanding of the gigantic ball of suppressed anxiety named "Tony" she's living with, and yet he can't bring himself to say a damn thing.

Pussy.

Embracing for just a moment the coward he's beginning to suspect he's always been, he starts regulating his breathing, inhaling and exhaling as deeply and smoothly as he can. He keeps his eyes closed, and he feels like such a fake, because though his heartrate has calmed down significantly, and most outward signs of distress have been neutralized, there is something heavy and cold situated between his stomach and throat, and he's not even sure whether it's an actual physical irregularity or it's psychosomatic, but whatever the hell it is, it's keeping him from breathing naturally.

The first time this happened he was convinced something had gone wrong with the arc reactor and he was dying. But by the end of a quick examination of the device, the sensation had abated, and it was clear that the object keeping him alive was in perfect condition. It's happened a few times since then, always when he's been alone, and he's managed to convince himself he can just pretend it doesn't happen and continue to operate normally.

Whatever his version of normal is.

Several minutes have passed, and he knows he should say something, but he also knows he's not going to, so he doesn't bother trying to convince himself to do so. He's a spineless, pathetic excuse for a man and instead of apologizing and offering whatever explanation he can to Pepper, he's going to try his damnedest to go back to sleep in her lap without saying a word.

When the sun rises a few hours later, he hasn't slept a wink. Pepper's been leaning against the wall, and he can't tell if she's fallen asleep, try though he might. It seems like she has, but she could just as well be pretending like he is, to make him feel less guilty.

Pepper's alarm goes off after another half hour, and she slowly slides out of bed, laying his head gently on a pillow, and goes to get dressed. He keeps still until she's gone, and he's already dreading the idea of facing her again after this, and for that he hates himself.

He roughly wipes off whatever liquid that is on his face—either sweat or tears—and pushes himself up to a sitting position. Enough of that. He doesn't hate himself. He can't hate himself. He's Tony Stark—he's Iron Man.

This needs to stop.

He's fine.