finding annabeth- tony stark

THREE

" all that blood was never once beautiful... it was always just red  "

Chapter 3:

Sometimes I won't hurt you 

Tony sometimes used to think that there was a rubber band holding on to his sanity, wound too tightly, liable to snap viciously at any possible moment. Nothing efficiently was in his control, everything just out of his nervous hands, no matter how desperately he would eagerly try to maintain some sort of imaginative grasp on everything that surrounded him. The stress would build and build and build, stretching him thinner and thinner, and yet, he would still try so hard to hold on, pulled in a dozen unknown directions at once.

He could feel himself beginning to crack around the raw edges, coming apart at the seams, one false move or ill-placed comment away from imploding on himself. He was in much simpler terms a slow-burn disaster, coming apart piece by piece, decaying a little more with each day that went past, petrifying in the radiant sun.

Tony would pray that no one saw his tenuous hold on reality, lest they should try to verify it, wrestle it away from him, finish driving him truly mad. That was not the chaotic world's duty, their right, their privilege. It was rigorously his and his all alone, Tony's God-given right and his own cross to bear. As much as it wasn't true, Tony wanted to fervently believe that he was the architect of his own creation, and only he could devise his own demise. And yet, the entire while, the world attempted to usurp him, hauling him just that much harder, just that much further, until he was no longer quite certain who was behind the cutting wheel of his life.

Forcing her back to him after years that had passed in a moment and forever was cruel... like an illicit affair the world had beckoned upon him in the specific name of fate and coincidence. Tony was a man of practical science. He didn't believe in fate.

The eccentric billionaire stood up with his eyes narrowed but carefully watching as the young brunette allegedly entered his office.

That windless morning had been a blur. He had risen when sleep had ceased to remain an option and dressed hastily and quietly. He could barely remember his first walk into the private office, had only a vague recollection of greeting Pepper as he entered the elegant building. He had immersed himself in the pending paperwork, mind not truly with him as he fumbled through his duties but when the door to his office opened, all he underwent was one look before his world shattered once again.

It promptly took him less than a minor fraction of a possible second to pinpoint who it correctly was— Annabeth or as someone else might undoubtedly prefer to dub it, the love of his life.