They stepped through the portal, leaving the Rogue Avengers behind along with the noise that came with hosting balls for people who seemed to only be there to try to be heard by as many people as possible.

Thankfully, the Rogues did not attempt to follow them. A part of Tony had been worried that they would try to follow him back to the tower, but - if nothing else - they seemed to have finally understood that they would not be welcomed there, and that, no matter what they would say, Stark Tower was not their home anymore. Or maybe they had simply been taken by surprise and had not had time to follow Tony and Stephen. When it came to the Rogues, Tony didn't really know which of the two were the case and probably never had. But at least he had been able to keep himself somewhat together while talking to them, something that he would have thought to be impossible just a few weeks ago.

He supposed he should feel happy or at least relieved about it. No matter how much he might have enjoyed reading the articles about it, Tony knew that the public would not have appreciated him getting emotional in front of the Rogue Avengers no matter what his reasons were. Perhaps a few people would understand the instinct of just needing to get away, but for the most part, Tony was fairly sure that a breakdown involving the disgraced part of the former Avengers team would only have made even more people argue that Tony was unfit to be involved in the Avengers Programme. And he could not have that happen.

However, now he could feel the price he would have to pay for having been able to suppress his emotions enough to appear cool, calm and collected. Although he had instructed F.R.I.D.A.Y. to keep the tower warm at all times - being stuck in his Iron Man suit in Siberia had been cold and if Tony wasn't cold anymore, he was safe - he was shaking slightly, and, despite desperately trying to convince his brain that it had nothing to do with the sense of unease sitting in his stomach, Tony knew that F.R.I.D.A.Y. was not to blame for his discomfort. But that did not calm him down, not in the slightest. His heart was beating even quicker than it had done when he had fought Whiplash on the race track in Monaco without the Iron Man armour to protect him. How he had even managed to prevent himself from simply running off the second Rogers had stepped over to lead him away from Stephen was a puzzle. But at least he had done it and - with just a bit of luck - it had been enough to convince the great Captain America that Tony really didn't need him anymore. Of course, Tony rarely seemed to have luck on his side, but at least there would be another prison escape between Tony and the next time he would possibly have to see Rogers again.

He really needed to get to work on designing a better way to protect the people around him. If there was even the slightest risk of Peter ever facing Captain America again, Tony would make sure that it would not be without a suit that would be able to withstand anything Captain America could drop into Peter.

"Were they really the old team?" Tony heard Stephen ask, making him look over at the other man. He was looking at Tony with an expression he couldn't really read. Once, Tony would have known for certain that when someone was frowning slightly, angling their head to look down at him, it meant that they were preparing to lecture him on the importance of teamwork or to tell him that he was letting his ego get out of control or that-

No. Tony shook his head. It didn't mean that anymore.

Trying to distract himself, Tony looked towards the kitchen while he spoke. "Yes. You just had the honour of meeting Captain America, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Black Widow. Although, I guess you didn't really get to meet the latter." he tried to form a little laugh but he could hear how hollow it sounded.

There were a couple of used plates left out on the kitchen island along with a glass filled with water. Well, at least the plates had been stacked. They could wait for later - had to wait for later, as Tony could not even imagine finding the energy to worry about putting them away.

"Hmm," Stephen said, "I doubt I missed anything important by not having the pleasure of meeting the Widow."

"Actually, if I have to be completely honest, I would say that Romanoff is the most competent out of all of them," Tony smiled, "I mean, it isn't like she has a lot of competition, but she did have the senses to run off before Maximoff decided to attack me. That way, she wouldn't get that added to all of the other charges against her. Not that it really matters a lot with all of the problems they are already in."

Romanoff simply running away had come as a surprise. Out at the airport, when she had suddenly decided to help Rogers and Barnes get away, Tony had assumed that it had been because of Rogers. The fact that she didn't like Tony all that much was not really a secret so he had thought that switching sides was what she had been planning to do since the beginning. But now it seemed that she had simply miscalculated how the fight was going and that it had simply been a smaller part of her goal of keeping herself alive.

Maybe she really was the most competent of them. At least she had had the sense to leave the team, even if she hadn't done it in time to get an actual chance to avoid being found by the Avengers.

"Tony!" a voice broke the silence, the sudden sound making both Tony and Stephen turn towards the door behind them to see Rhodey entering the room.

He strolled over to them while Tony tried to fight off the impulse to immediately ask about the leg braces. There was no need for the question; Rhodey looked fine, the slightly awkward way of placing one foot in front of the other that had been characteristic for Rhodey the first couple of days after having gotten the braces, long gone. So there really wasn't any reason to ask about it and remind Rhodey how he had gotten dragged into the mess that was the Civil War, as the public had begun to call the way the Avengers had split up over the Sokovia Accords. And from the way he was looking at Tony, brows furrowed, Rhodey was already worrying over something.

So instead, Tony just shot him a smile. It wasn't like the ones he would give reporters, Rhodey would have been able to see through that in an instant, but it was still so unnatural that it felt straining. "Rhodey, I didn't know you would be here."

But Rhodey just continued walking towards him, and before Tony knew of it, Rhodey had wrapped his arms around him, giving him a tight hug.

"Carol got a message from the Accords Council just a couple of minutes ago telling her that the Rogues had come back and that they had found you."

"Whoa, they sent Carol after them. Now, I almost feel bad for those idiots, they won't stand a chance against her," Tony said, letting out an impressed whistle

Rhodey just looked at him with an unimpressed expression. "Of course they won't, it's Carol. But what about you? Are you okay? "

The air around him turned frigid and Tony had to suppress a shiver. Was he ever really okay? How long had he been content just pretending that everything was fine, having to keep it together for just another couple of seconds before he could head into another room to fall to the floor, unable to do anything other than simply hope that he would not die and that the shortness of breath was just yet another effect from the battle of Manhattan? His therapist, a nice woman named Lisa who would let him speak and who actually listened to him when he would finally begin to talk, had said that it was a symptom of anxiety and PTSD. Tony didn't know what to call it and didn't really care either. He only knew that his father would have accused him of being weak and that Steve would have told him to keep it together and man up.

He hoped that Lisa was right about him; he really wanted her to be. That way, maybe he would be able to convince himself that he was not just weak or egoistic.

The right thing to do would be to tell his team and friends about his thoughts and feelings. Tony knew that was the option that Lisa would have suggested him. But Lisa was not there and he was so tired.

"Yeah, I'm okay. Although I am sorry that you and Carol's date got cut short."

"Don't be, your safety is more important than a date."

"I wasn't ever in danger." Tony looked over at Stephen for a moment, trying to gauge what his reaction would be, before continuing. "In fact, they seemed to think that they needed to save me from you," he nodded towards Stephen, "and from the Accords Council in general."

But Rhodey just shook his head. "Uh, even disregarding the fact that spending so much time with Rogers and the others was what made you in desperate need of a therapist in the first place, I think I can say for certain that Rogers proved how little he cared about your personal wellbeing when he left you in Siberia. Tony, you were actually in mortal danger."

"And that is not even to mention," Stephen added and Tony shot him a look to try to figure out what he was about to say, "how Maximoff did in fact try to gain control over you again."

It was probably not a good sign, but Tony just felt numb at that revelation. That Maximoff's outburst had not simply been an accident did make a lot of sense after all. The witch hated him and with the rest of the Rogues having seemingly agreed that Tony was the only thing standing between them and being able to move back into the Compound and becoming Avengers again, he doubted that they would have done anything at all to stop her. Feeling betrayed would probably be the normal reaction to that, but that would have required for the news to be a surprise. With how Rogers had been able to stay so calm while Thor had been about to kill Tony and him constantly insisting that Maximoff was still a child, it was not really a surprise that he would not have moved to stop her. Not at all.

However, it seemed that the news had managed to shock Rhodey.

"What?! She did?" walking over to the kitchen island, Rhodey looked down at the little stack of used dishes in front of him. "Please tell me your little magic trick worked," he continued as he went to pick up the stack of plates and began to place them in the dishwasher.

"It is not a 'trick' even though you seem to insist on calling it that," Stephen said, and Tony didn't even have to look over at him to know that he was smirking, "it is a complex spell that had to be bound to a single object Tony would be able to carry with him at all times. Not exactly something I would refer to as a 'trick'."

"Oh, I don't doubt that it took a lot of time and hard work to ensure Tony's safety, and I am relieved that you were there to take care of the situation."

Rhodey shot Tony a looked that was filled with just a little too much worry for his comfort. Rhodey and Stephen abandoning their constant bickering over all things magical to instead worry about his safety was not really something Tony wanted to see. They had enough to worry about already.

So he did what he always did in those situations: he tried to joke it away. "Wow, Platypus, if the professors at MIT could hear you known, not even protesting when this guy here," Tony gestured towards Stephen, who just smiled at him, "claims that he is able to do things that so clearly break the laws of physics."

Barely raising an eyebrow, Rhodey shot back, "if they could hear you so blatantly forget that they also told us that if you are able to repeatedly get observations that contradict a scientific law, then the law is wrong, they would probably give you detention for a year."

"Touché, I didn't think of that."

"Of course you did, you think of everything before it happens. It wouldn't surprise me if you already knew exactly how this conversation would go, the second I stepped into the room."

Had it been anyone but Rhodey who had made that observation, Tony was not sure what would have happened, but he suspected that it would either have ended with him breaking down and crying or simply turning cold and attempt to leave the room.

Because it had hit just a bit too close to home. After all, wasn't thinking about everything what Tony Stark did? Think and think and think until reality itself seemed to change around him. Board meetings became a battle in his mind, the other people around the table turning into people he had to make sure would not harm him like Stane had done. Actual battles became a series of analysis and equations, the answer often being that Tony Stark's death would be an acceptable sacrifice. That had been the case during the battle of Manhattan, when he had decided to go through the portal with a nuke, knowing full well that the chance of him surviving was practically non-existent. Waking up to see the other Avengers, the rest of the team, look down at him, worry written across every feature, had been like being reborn, and he had allowed himself to hope that maybe, just maybe, this was what having a family felt like.

But then it had happened again. Tony had been presumed dead, only this time, his supposed team had not seemed to care at all. When his home had been under attack and Tony had woken up in the snow, he had hoped for them to come help him. But they didn't, and Tony realised why much too late.

Despite all of their talks about camaraderie and friendship, the Avengers had turned out to - much like the rest of the world had always done - only care about Tony Stark, the billionaire, and not actually Tony, the mechanic who loved to hide away in his labs for days on end, trying to create something that could keep the Earth safe from the army he had seen on the other side of the portal. No, they hadn't cared about any of that, only that Tony had the money, the resources, and the contacts that could get them out of trouble and allow them to continue doing whatever they wanted without fear of repercussions.

Really, he should have known that it could never lead to anything other than disaster. But he had been too scared of losing them to allow himself to realise that.

Having the benefit of hindsight, it was laughable how he had once fought tooth and nail to make them like him. That, once, the worst thing Tony could think of in the world, would be to see them dead in front of him and know that he had not done everything he could possibly have done to prevent it.

How that had changed since then. Now his nightmares were filled with visions of Barnes' metal hand killing his mother, Captain America bringing down the shield - the shield that Howard had made - and the vibranium crushing everything that had been hidden away under the armour, while his dreams were about Steve not changing his mind at the last moment and the shield hitting his face instead of the arc reactor in the suit.

Lisa had told him that it was a relatively normal way of reacting to everything that had happened to him, to retreat into his own mind and wish for self-destruction. Typical. Growing up, Tony would have given anything to just be a normal child with parents who loved him, someone who didn't have to be the best at everything he did in the hopes that it would be enough to make his father love him. And here he was, finally having some sort of normalcy in his life, but of course it had to come in the form of him barely being able to keep himself together through an entire day with all the thoughts of disaster flying around in his brain. Just his luck.

"Yeah, perhaps you are right," he managed to say with a forced smile.

Perhaps he really did think of everything, but it just seemed that it was all the bad things that stayed with him.