Now

Tony sat alone in the dark, staring down at the object he held in his hands. Was he absolutely sure about this? Yes, a little voice in his mind answered, we both saw this coming. After what they did to you, there was no other way it could end. It's okay, you want this, you want this...

The worst part was, the voice was right.

He wanted this.

Before

He didn't know how it happened, or when it happened, but somewhere in the back of his mind, a little voice had told him that it would. Why would anyone want to be friends with you?!, it spat. Tony hadn't listened to that little voice since he was in his teens, so he did what he always did: drown it out with booze.

When Tony had first met the team, he had been very hopeful. He was part of a team, now, and didn't team members almost always end up being really close; like a family? They didn't seem to be getting along, though. Always fighting, not trusting. Some team they were.

They came together in the end. Tony hated to prove Fury right, but in this one case, he was glad he was. The Avengers were a success. Maybe it had taken a battle to get them to work right, but they had done it. The day was saved, and everyone lived. Well, everyone on the team, which was actually very lucky, because Tony almost didn't make it back. It would have been better if you hadn't, the voice whispered. Safe and oblivious in the endlessness of space.

So, the day was saved and all that was left now was the clean-up. His new team looked as if they were all going to go their separate ways, and Tony was desperate for that not to happen. So, he offered up his place to serve as HQ. He had enough rooms for everyone. They could all stay together, they could all stay friends. It had been far too long since Tony had had friends.

He pushed and pushed and pushed, but eventually got everyone to agree to stay. Even Bruce, who had been on the verge of disappearing again into some third-world country. It was Avengers Tower, now. The home of the "Earth's Mightiest Heroes", and for the first time in a long while, Tony was happy. He had Pepper as his girlfriend, Rhodey as his best friend, and the Avengers as his family. Everything was good.

Then, about a year or two later, it all began to go wrong. The team had been out on another one of their missions, and Tony had nearly gotten himself hurt. He was fine, but Pepper wasn't. When they got back to the tower, he had found her with all of her bags packed. "I can't keep doing this," she had said. "I can't relax with you always going out there," she had said. Then, Pepper left; and for the first time in those two years the team had been together, Tony turned back to the bar to drown out his sorrows.

After that, things just got worse. Fury put Rhodey, in the suit that Tony had "given" him back when he was still dying, in with the Avengers. Tony wasn't exactly sure why, but he welcomed him on. He was his best friends, after all. But then, they started calling Tony out on missions less and less. They had said that they were worried about the effect his drinking would have on his ability to preform. Before long, they stopped calling him out at all. I told you they would never want you, the little voice whispered. There will always be someone better.

It was getting harder not to listen.

Tony tried to reason that, even though he wasn't going out on missions with them, they were still his friends. Natasha and Steve asked him to spar, Clint asked him to help pull pranks, Bruce asked him to run experiments, and Thor asked him to just hang out. We're friends, he told himself, but the little voice had just laughed at that. For now, it hissed, the words echoing in his mind.

Tony tried to brush it off. What did it know? They were friends, and always would be. Except...

Natasha and Steve stopped asking him to spar. They sparred with Rhodey, now. "He needs to be prepared for the missions," they had said. Excuses, it spat.

Tony could no longer ignore it.

Clint stopped asking him to help pull pranks. "Its starting to get a little tired of it," he reasoned. He's starting to get a little tired of you, the little voice taunted.

Tony could no longer brush it off.

Thor stopped hanging out with him. He went off to visit his girlfriend. "I miss my Jane," he boomed. He just wants to get away from you. It was always there.

Tony was starting to think it had a seed of truth.

But Bruce? Bruce was the worst. He stopped asking him to run experiments with him. "I've just been busy with Pepper," he stated. That's right, Pepper. The two of them had started going out, and now Bruce was talking about moving in with her. They hate you, the little voice yelled triumphantly. They all hate you!

Tony believed it.

Now

Tony hadn't moved for the past half hour. He just sat there, consumed by the loneliness and the emptiness within him. The gun in his hands glinted in the light from his arc reactor. Tony cracked a smile, but it held nothing but pain and sorrow.

Just like when you were younger. The little voice was soothing, now. Just like back then, but this time, you can do it. I know you can.

Tony stalled for a beat. Was he positive that this was what he wanted?

Of course you want this! They won't care. They replaced you! Cast you out! They'll be glad you're gone. The little voice was being nasty again, and Tony was too tired to stop it. Besides, it was true. Fury had replaced him with Rhodey. Steve and Natasha had replaced him with Rhodey. Clint had replaced him with maturity. Thor had replaced him with Jane. Rhodey had replaced him with the rest of the team. Pepper and Bruce had replaced him with each other. He didn't belong with them anymore. They wouldn't care.

The gun was loaded, ready to fire. Tony raised it to his temple, and was calmer than he thought he should be. Had JARVIS's communication system still been online, he would have called for help, but there was nothing he could do now but watch his creator and pray that he didn't pull the trigger.

He did.

After

The crack of the gunshot rang out through the empty tower. Everyone had gone out, had left Tony alone. They hadn't known anything like this would happen. In their minds, Tony was so full of himself, so full of life, that they didn't even think anything like this could happen.

No one knew how much he was hurting. Not even Clint or Natasha, and they had been trained to pick up on things like that. Neither of them would ever forgive themselves for not noticing. None of the Avengers would.

It was hours before they came home, all of them still laughing from the fun night out they had had together. They had asked Tony in passing, but he had said that he had too much work to do. Shame, Steve thought, but didn't manage to remember that Tony hadn't really worked on anything in months.

None of them had felt the slightest thing off when they came back into their apartments. They had decided that they were going to put on a movie, and thought that maybe Tony would join them for that. Rhodey had volunteered to ask him, so he went down to Tony's lab. Tony hadn't been in there, and that had brightened his spirits. Maybe that meant that he would hang out with them, Rhodey thought. It felt like it had been ages since he had hung out with Tony.

Since Tony hadn't been in the lab, Rhodey decided to check his bedroom. The door had been shut, so he knocked politely, calling out "Tony." There was no response, so Rhodey knocked again. Still nothing.

He pushed gingerly at the door and found it, to his surprise, unlocked, so he pushed it open further and poked his head inside his best friend's room. All of the lights were off. Was Tony really asleep this early? The coppery scent of blood went completely unnoticed.

"Tony?" Rhodey called again softly. Through the darkness, he could just make out the billionaire's shadowy silhouette stretched out on the floor. He pushed the door open all the way and walked in, crouching down at his friend's side and laying a hand on his shoulder, shaking gently. His skin was cold to the touch. "Tony?" he repeated, worried now.

He turned the genius from his side onto his back and screamed. "Tony!" But the man couldn't hear him. He would never hear again.

Tony's eyes were empty and distant, his hand still wrapped around the gun and the hole in his head still red and sticky with blood. "No, no, no, don't do this to me," Rhodey begged, but it was hopeless. There was nothing he could do.

Rhodey broke then and there, tears streaming down his face and he collapsed into his friend's chest. He couldn't even find composure enough to tell JARVIS to call the others, not that JARVIS would have been able to anyway. It was several minutes before Natasha came to find them. As stubborn as Tony was, it shouldn't take that long to get an answer out of him, she thought. When she came into her teammate's room, however, and saw Rhodey sobbing into his chest, she already knew what had happened.

She stood in the doorway for a moment, in complete shock, before she sprinted off back to the living room to tell the others. She had figures that Tony had taken JARVIS offline, because JARVIS would have already told them if he hadn't. The bright and cheery atmosphere of the room dimmed instantly as Natasha entered, then plummeted even further when she told them what happened.

No one else could believe it, either. They all raced to Tony's room, seeing the genius's lifeless body that Rhodey was sobbing into. Even though they all knew that this was it, they looked to Bruce with one last glimmer of hope in their eyes, but he just shook his head. There was nothing to be done.

Tony was gone.