Tony lolled his head to the side. It hadn't even been a long conversation, but it felt like there was a vampire in the room with them, sucking everything out. Maybe there always had been, and he'd been too afraid to peek behind the curtain.

His chest felt tight and his eyes felt hot.

"That's just it." The tone of his voice was firm, but too emotional. He recognized it, from a board room, occupied by only himself and Steve Rogers. Captain Fucking America. Tony never spoke it out loud, like a curse, but he felt it -- that somewhere along the line, the public had its names mixed up. Whose face represented America at its best in the new century? It was Tony Stark, smirking and glittering and denying culpability because it was just one of his products, fallen into the wrong hands. It wasn't an apartment building ripped apart, it was a rounding error, a Tuesday.

"Just another product. And when my eyes were finally forced open I thought I was going to fix the problem. I really did."

It was Obie's voice, strangely, that haunted him then. It was a frustrated, little poison dart spoken about Wanda in the heat of an argument.

"I tried to rid the world of weapons. All I did was create its best one yet."

He wasn't talking about the suit. Because Tony Stark was the suit.