One step forward....
By the time they got back to the apartment, Tony was feeling....content. Which was kind of unfamiliar territory for him. He couldn't remember a time, not even before his long imprisonment, that he hadn't felt like he was right at the edge of something, some sort of vast, intangible force that would close over and smother him unless he kept pushing back against it. And he still felt that way, to some extent, but it was less desperate, here. Less urgent. He thought it probably had to do with his companions -- his fellow Scions. True, he'd spent the day largely ignoring them, but.... that had been okay. They just let him be. Didn't seem ashamed or even really afraid of him -- well, except for E with that stupid hat -- didn't try to pressure him into being anything other than what he was. He didn't have to fight them, was what it was. He'd been fighting the whole damn world for so long, he didn't know how to do anything else. This....wasn't so bad, but it was going to take some getting used to.
But just tonight, just for now, Tony could close his eyes and feel like he was almost a real human being.
He made the mistake of doing just that, and the face that swam up unbidden behind his closed eyes was a stranger's he'd never seen before that morning and thought he never would again. That face from the news report, the one that wasn't his. He'd managed to hide it that morning -- that split-second of crippling terror -- when the thought flashed through his mind that that was the real Tony Donado on the screen, and he was just an imposter, a tangent, a figment of his own imagination. Clearly, the insane ramblings of a madman. He'd been able to stifle it swiftly enough then, and had all but forgotten about it until right now.
"This is all real," he said out loud, but then wished he hadn't. Of course it was real. And he was real. Only a lunatic would have to convince himself of that.
Of course it was real. Everything that happened today had really happened, and he had the wounds to prove it. He stripped off his shirt -- which Nigel insisted that he wear at all times while in public -- and stared at himself in the mirror. With one finger he traced the claw marks that had just missed his right eye, decorating his cheek and the side of his neck, instead, before plunging deeply into his shoulder. If this wasn't real, he didn't know what was; it still even hurt when he thought about it.
Of course it was real. And he was real. Hell, it wasn't like he could just magically wish them away. These gouges would be a tangible reminder until they healed, and even after that they'd leave a scar --
Tony's eyes went wide as dinnerplates as the slashes across his face and neck disappeared, like some master cartoonist just erased them from his reflection in the mirror. His hands flew to his face, feeling nothing but intact, unblemished skin; not even a dimple left behind.
"FUCK."
He managed to turn the frantic scream he felt rising into a slightly less horrified -- but still extremely perturbed -- coherent syllable, and burst out of his room, not sure and not caring whether the door was still on its hinges in his wake. He cleared the common room in three massive strides, leaving that door to a similar fate, and ran down the hall, down the stairs, down and down and away as the walls closed in around him, trying to trap him in this hallucination of himself.
The panic was short-lived, and by the time he reached the twentieth floor he'd slowed to a brisk walk. He kept going, though, because he couldn't make himself turn around and go back. Of course he was real. Only a lunatic would have to convince himself of that. But still his hand rubbed the smooth skin of his right cheek -- that couldn't be a lie, either. Only a lunatic, only a lunatic....
He had to turn his brain off, or he'd keep going around and around this insane loop forever. Mindless exertion he could throw himself into, focus on the here and now and bury the rest of himself as brain dead. If "here" and "now" really were what they claimed; if a figment could be silenced in its own imagining mind.
He was so lost in his own mental trauma that he didn't hear the ruckus that was either Evan or a rhinoceros crashing around the weight room, and thus opened the door to find the place in shambles, machines overturned on their sides, weights scattered everywhere, wrecked like it had been hit by the world's most localized tornado.
"Shit, seriously?"
And then he had to laugh, an unhinged, delirious laugh, because he didn't even know the meaning of that word anymore.