Imagine If You Assembled The Avengers: Volume 2

Scarred (Barnes/Stark x reader)

WARNINGS: death, self-harm, depression, thoughts of suicide, dissociation

"I can almost...reach you..." you grunted, stretching yourself to your limits, trying desperately to connect with a young girl who had fallen from the safety of your arms, the tips of your leather-clad fingers grazing just over her skin. "Come on, sweetie, just a little farther." Another explosion shook the ground beneath you, nearly toppling you into the cavernous opening below and shaking her even farther from your grasp.

"(Y/N)! (Y/N), report, where are you? We need to get outta here now!"

You ripped the comm from your ear and threw it aside, refusing to believe that you would leave without finishing this rescue mission and without the girl staring helplessly at you from beyond your limits. A second blast succeeded in throwing you from your already unstable precipice, but you just barely grabbed the edge and hung on as best as you could, still trying unsuccessfully to reach her. "I'll get to you, I promise! Just hold on, okay?" you called out to her, but she was barely able to stay in place on the slippery rock that held her above a certain death. When another blast hit, you knew it was finally over.

Your hand slipped and you felt your body drifting down, watching the girl fall beneath you and no way for you to save either of you. Her eyes locked on you and your heart broke, knowing that you had failed her, and your inability to save her had robbed her from the future that she should have had. You took some small solace in knowing that you would be gone with her and the pain you were both feeling would soon be gone.

"I've got you!" Tony yelled out, grabbing you from the air as he flew by. You struggled to free yourself, looking down to find the girl but not seeing her anywhere.

"Tony, we have to go back! I dropped her! I have to go back!"

"She's gone, (Y/N). I had time to save only one of you. I'm sorry."

"You chose wrong!" You reluctantly held on to him and forced yourself to look away from where she had fallen, squeezing your eyes shut and trying to will her image from your mind. This moment was going to stay with you, and you told yourself that the sooner you began working on forgetting, the less it would hurt. You were good at lying to yourself like that.

"Tony, you chose wrong."

~~~

The first problem of quinjets was the lack of privacy. Sure, their only primary function was to take you back and forth from mission to mission, but when one ends so terribly and with so much pain, all you wanted was to be as far away from people as possible. Any other day, any other mission, you would welcome the closeness of the team and the relationships you had built, but today would not be that day.

You sat in the farthest corner of the jet that you could squeeze into and did your best to avoid the watchful eyes of your team, closing your eyes and retreating into your own mind. You had almost succeeded when you were rudely interrupted.

"I would never not choose you, (Y/N). If I had to do it again, over and over, I would always choose you. You need to know that and never doubt it."

"Go away, Tony."

"Now that's one thing that I can't do," he sighed, sitting himself down next to you. He struggled a bit with the cramped area, but he managed to fold his legs in tightly enough to just fit. "You must be smaller than I thought to fit in here," he said with a hint of levity, trying to pull you out of your mood.

"Please. Please go away."

"You're blaming yourself, and that's not okay, (Y/N)," he pressed. "You know what happens when we start doing that." His voice had quieted and he watched his hands wringing together at the reminiscence of all he had done to bring himself to feel as you were now. "I have quite the first-hand experience in self-hatred."