Hello, my name is....
He gazed out the window of his new penthouse apartment, staring down at the city far below. Such a familiar place, suddenly turned so....unreal. Strange, almost make-believe. There was more than just forty-four stories separating him from the world down there. Evan's blunt, matter-of-fact words still echoed in his head. "Two thousand and twelve." He thought saying it out loud ought to somehow bring it home, connect the dots between himself and reality, but it seemed to do just the opposite. The last thing he remembered clearly was smiling at his little brother, telling him he'd be back soon. It could have been yesterday. But it wasn't. Turned out it was five years ago. Five years of nothing but a blurry haze of doctors and walls, shadows and ghosts. Incessant and interminable, melting out of dream to dream, floating and impossible and still so much more real than any of this.
His gaze shifted towards the horizon He couldn't see the institution, of course, it was too far away, and even if he could it wasn't the institution anymore. Everything was destroyed, everyone was dead. Nothing left but a six-story tomb.
It wasn't pity he felt for them. It was anger. They called him crazy -- schizophrenic -- and imprisoned him inside his own mind. And now they were all dead because of it. They brought it on themselves; he felt no guilt or remorse on their account. But that rage, that gut-wrenching fury still boiled up inside him. Massive hands clenched into massive fists, and before he knew anything else the window exploded outward and he was staring at his own glass-studded knuckles.
That was the root of it, of course. Not that those poor, stupid bastards had gotten themselves killed, but his own role -- his lack of role. Tony was not one to be overpowered, not one to be held against his will. He might be a lot of things, but helpless was never one of them. But still he had been -- for so long! -- and that was the most unkindest cut of all. The real root of his fury was shame at his own weakness for letting it happen.
He bit down hard on his tongue stud, closed his eyes as the soothing taste of his own blood bloomed in his mouth. The rough repiercings he'd had to do himself had healed up hours ago -- most hadn't even bled -- but he kept reopening this one like a junkie taking a hit. It would heal despite his best efforts eventually, but for now this more than anything was his lifeline, a crimson elixir to keep him sane even though he wasn't, keep him grounded in this counterfeit reality of make-believe.
He picked as many glass fragments out of his hand as he could; the rest would work their way out as his skin knit back together with inhuman haste. Already the few trickles of blood that were drawn had ceased to flow. He turned his back to the open air and surveyed the room, this new home he'd been given, perhaps temporarily, perhaps not. The lights were off in the dead of night, but his eyes saw perfectly clearly. More than enough ambient light leaked in from the crack beneath the closed door, from the city far, far below. He was, after all, the son of a Sun God; any light at all was enough for him. And if there truly wasn't any, well, he could always make his own.
It was like a hotel room, the way it looked and the way it felt. A place to be stayed at but never lived in. It was as fake as the world outside the window, real in every single way except inside his head. Did that make him crazy? Years and years of botched "therapy," and those dead motherfuckers finally had their diagnosis? At least the ghosts were quiet here.
He wondered briefly what his room still looked like at home -- if his parents had even kept it. He doubted David would have, but his mother might. He thought he remembered her visiting him once or twice, swirled incomprehensibly with the lights and the drowning, but it might have just been the voices, might just be his own self making up memories even now. Maybe they turned it into Jonas' room -- he'd be what, eight by now? With the closest thing to grief he could recall ever feeling, Tony wondered if Jonas even remembered that he had an older brother. He bit down on his tongue ring again.
Suddenly it was very important for Tony to know what the news would report about the institute's destruction, what his family would be told. The best, he felt sure, would be that he was dead. He pulled the cell phone out of his jeans pocket -- both items that had been in the box of personal effects taken from the institute, along with his wallet, jewelry, and of course the blood-red feather he wore around his neck -- and stared at it for a moment. It was off, of course, the battery must have died years ago. He considered tossing it out the wrecked window, but then put it back into his pocket instead.
His hands itched; he needed to be doing something. It was almost four in the morning, but the thought of sleep was abhorrent to him right now. It was a fact he'd never admit to anyone, a fact he had so much trouble admitting to himself that it remained a thought only half-formed at the back of his mind, but as hard a time as he had believing that all this was real.... he was kind of terrified that it might not be. That this could be just another dream as he was pulled into whirlpool upon whirlpool of smothering darkness, that if he went back to sleep there would be no more waking up.
He wasn't tired, anyway, not by miles. With one last glance around, he opened the door and went into the common room, trying to leave depressing thoughts of his family closed up behind him. They were unimportant, in the grand scheme of things. As was this whole place, really; Cassius Corp. was unimportant. Ursula Laroi was unimportant. This city was unimportant. Maintaining the natural order of the universe was all that mattered, and destroying Titanspawn was Tony's small part in it. It was a simple enough thing to focus on for now. He was walking the razor's edge between real and imaginary; trying to look at any bigger a chunk of the picture would surely unravel whatever sanity he had left.
The common room was not empty, despite the late (or extremely early) hour; a news broadcast was playing on TV, and Evan sat on the couch watching it. Tony did not sit down, but stopped to watch as well. There was no story about the institution yet, it was still too early for that. But he had been out of the loop for entirely too long, what the hell else better to do now than start catching up?
"No shit, the President's black?"