There was something comforting in wandering the city. True, Tony had long since lost any hope of anonymity, but the city had been his stamping grounds for as long as he could remember...and for a lot of things he couldn’t remember, as well. There was a coffee stand on a corner on Fifth Avenue, and it seemed like the guy who ran it hadn’t aged in a decade or two. The coffee was still way too strong and just on the hairy edge of burnt, and it still turned Tony’s blood into something not unlike jet fuel.
This was the kind of dependability that kept him centered these days, the small, common things that remained the same despite the wild shit-stirring that was going on around him. And sure, he was usually the shit-stirrer in question, or the one that was funding the professional shit-stirrers, but this was...so much more. If he’d known that his actions, his suggestions, his hopes for the future...would drive an immovable wedge between himself and some of the most important people in his life, would he still have chosen to speak up?
Fuck. This was one of the days that he was questioning it, and it made his head hurt...as well as that jaded, rusty piece of machinery that had once been a human heart.
