Seating himself in one of the many chairs littered across of the tower's medbay, the man had silent tears run down the sides of his face. Eyes red and puffy, his legs shaking and failing to remain calm at the scarce beeps of the heart monitor. He hid them well, his hands covering the most of the evidence.

He had failed.

The tesseract was not aboard the plane, and his time was nearly running out. Director Fury had refused his wishes, and he was desperate for a solution. It had hurt just a bit at the idea of harming the Avengers. They did no wrong, really. They had simply arrived at the base at the wrong time.

He's been in the middle of running a full widespread scan of the building and an extra thousand mile radius of the area in hopes of finding the damned cube. He never even realized it was a HYDRA base until he had gotten to the main labs, finding the daunting red insignia plastered right on the wall with the words Hail Hydra right beneath it.

If his guess was right, the only reason such a place was registered in SHIELD's database as a secured bunker was because of rats and leeches. The Nazi-terrorist organization was living within SHIELD, and they didn't even notice.

Was he going to help? No.

They turned their heads when he begged for help, so who was he to help them in return? It wasn't like they knew they needed it. The corruption was an inside job. He will let the agency burn from the inside, and in the process, pluck the little cube from their decaying hands. It was a win-win, really. HYDRA loses the cube, and he'd finally get what he needs. No losses there.

Closing his eyes, he rested his head against the window with a pained sigh. Yesterday's events had rendered him utterly exhausted. It would take a few days before he could even think about barging into another base. He was lucky the first time - he arrived before the Avengers did. With them knowing of his existence, plans had to be drastically changed.

He never thought his first encounter with the heroes would be the beating of a lifetime, but he planned it - an emergency, if you will. He knew what he was doing was not right. Maybe not morally bad, but wrong. So coming into contact with some form of police or proclaimed heroes was added to his list of possible obstacles.

Aside from building a stealth suit to infiltrate whole military-guarded places and the technology to bypass security, he spent months studying and educating himself in the art of all things combat and defence. That, on top of his natural brilliance was a deadly combination. He was already a cunning and manipulative genius in his own right, but adding combat knowledge and skill to the mix was distasteful to those that dared.

He didn't know whether to laugh or cry when he had fought the Avengers that day. They're fighting techniques were beautiful, and their teamwork impeccable. He saw the way the Black Widow and Hawkeye were practically inseparable, and how the Falcon was quick to catch up with Captain America and match his movements.

For a rowdy group, their hearts were good. If he didn't know any better, if his life went a different route, he'd probably be apart of that very team. Laughing, watching movies at his place, and absolutely loving every second of it behind snarking remarks and award-winning smiles.

No more, though.

His body ached, the Avengers probably saw him as an enemy, Fury was an absolute joy to manipulate, and he still didn't have the tesseract.

He was never one to shy away from bloodshed, but for his situation, seriously maiming Earth's best defenders was not part of the equation. Otherwise, he would never forgive himself. If at anytime in the future he was forced to fight them again, he'll simply hospitalize them all. Humans had over about two hundred bones, so surely a few with long-term recovery or therapy was okay.

"Tony?"

His head shot up, heavy eyelids forcing themselves open at the sudden presence in the room.

The leading medical doctor of the tower, Helen Cho had been called in for an energy check-in with her boss. Seeing him waltz into her sector of the medical wing with bruises and cuts was new. She had bandaged him up earlier, and had just left the room to grab more gauze and alcohol.

"Mind telling me what happened? Were you mugged or something? Assaulted?"

"Heh," Tony scoffed, "no one has the balls to assault me outside of my own building, Cho. Elsewhere, maybe. Not here. I got into a bit of a misunderstanding when I went to visit one of our old SI buildings. I was not in my usually garb - y'know, a suit and tie and looking like I ran the place? Bastards thought I was an intruder or something."

It wasn't exactly a lie.

"Then why were you crying?"

Touching his face with his uninjured hand, he felt the cold wetness of tears gathering and dropping down his cheek. Shaking eyes looking down from his hand then up at Cho, he sighed. A broken smile, and tears running freely.

"If I didn't come back," he paused, "if I failed... I don't know what I'd do."

"Oh, Tony," Helen smiled weakly, clutching her clipboard, "Pepper would be sad, but we'd all understand if-"

"No, Helen, you don't understand- if I- if I don't make it, I could never forgive myself." She did not understand, she could never. The severity of his situation could never compare to anything else. He needed the tesseract. "I can't leave this world as it is now, I can't."

Confused, Helen flipped through her analysis pages, "You came to me with bruised ribs! Also two ulna fractures, and a clean break through your humerus bone. Those are on one arm. Those are some serious injuries, Tony."

Pulling up another one of the plastic hospital chairs in the medbay, she went ahead and sat directly across from him. Looking him dead in the eyes, she rested her hand on his. "You can tell me, if you'd like. Whatever's bothering you."

He flashed a terrified glance to the plain silver band that sat snuggly on his ring finger, the arm still thrown into a sling.

"Pepper is a strong woman... she could survive without me."

"But she can't really live without you, could she?"

On the precipice of laughing, Tony stood up and ignored her question. Pepper would be able to survive without him. Pepper could live her life to the fullest without him. What worried him was their anchor. Tony was falling apart at the seams, and he knew Pepper was barely keeping herself together. They would both work themselves to death if it continued.

Which was why he had to do it.

Without the tesseract, without anything, he would lose his mind and fall into a darkness he did not want to fall into. He was already losing enough of his sanity as it was. If no progress happened in the next few months, he had no doubt in his mind he'd stop his little excursions would become far more gruesome. Small-time raids of old bases would eventually turn to full blown extermination missions with little to no care of consequence for civilians and innocent bystanders. He already slaughtered people left and right at that base. In time, a small base would never be enough.

He'd never look into another mirror ever again if that happened, because he'd hate what he'd see in his reflection.

With Helen Cho having left, leaving the man alone with his own devices, he stared down at the polished floors between his shoes.

His hair was askew, and eyes bloodshot red from his crying with heavy circles beneath them. His skin looked as if it were to fall right off, and he was in desperate need of a shower. He looked like hell.

"I'm so... so sorry," with a softer, more broken voice than ever before, he spoke to his own reflection on the floor, "I... I-I don't know what to do... I'm trying, I'm trying, but-" His vision hazy, he saw as tears fell to the floor, staining his reflection. "...I don't think it'll be enough."

The hours blended together, his back aching the longer he sat in the chair. The heart monitor still producing the ear-breaking beeps that signified life. He refused to look, to see the damage he had no control over. Helen said she would understand.

She could never understand.

With newfound determination, he stood up from his seat and walked off. Away from the medbay, away from the damned beeping of the heart monitor. For he knew that if he turned around, he would have to see the root of his pain. The root of his anger and suffering.

The moment he stepped foot into the elevator, he turned around on his feet. The long daunting hall of the bed faced him, and at the end of the hall, he saw it all.

As the elevator doors closed painfully slow, and as the lights within the spaced cube began to overtake the light from the hallway, his eyes stayed glued to the monitor that was sticking out from it's respective room. The lines across the dark green screen were his only solace, knowing that the heart beat displayed on the screen was alive. The doors were closing, and as the two metal doors met, the billionaire cried.

"J."

[Yes, sir?]

"I... I-I want you to cut my access to this floor. Completely. If I ever ask to come here, bring me directly to my lab and get DUM-E to bring me my aid set."

[Sir?]

[Is that wise?]

"I don't care if it's wise or not, you will to do it, Jarvis."

[If I may, your health has significantly declined and I would advise that you heal throu-]

"Please."

There was long pause from the A.I. The only thing audible within the elevator being the sound of the box moving up to the penthouse.

[Of course, sir.]