Trigger warning: this chapter goes into pretty significant detail of eating disorders, specifically bulimia. Please don't read if this is likely to be triggering for you. Take care of yourselves x

"-ny... Tony." 

Tony jumped when Rhodey grabbed his shoulder and hauled him up, an anxious but determined expression on his face as he glanced to the corridor they had taken Eleanora down. "C'mon man, you gotta pull it together. What happened?" 

"I don't know! She acting a little weird and then suddenly she collapsed and then she started- started-" he shook his head.  

"She'll be okay," Rhodey assured him, squeezing his shoulder. "Nora's tough." 

Tony knew that, but he also hadn't seen anything as disturbing or terrifying as the sight of Eleanora convulsing on the floor like that. He felt sick. 

"Hey, at least we're in the ER. The best possible place for a medical emergency to occur." 

"I just don't get why it happened," Tony shook his head, slightly pissed off by his optimism. "What caused it?" 

"I don't think that's worth dwelling on that much right now," Rhodey said softly. "There's some seats over there, why don't you go sit down? I'm gonna grab some food from the vending machine." 

He nodded blankly and went and sat down where the other man had gestured, rubbing his hands over his face anxiously. 

To be honest, Tony had forgotten why they had been in the hospital in the first place until he saw a young man rush into the room, glancing around wildly until his eyes landed on Amanda and he hurried over to her. Tony watched as the man crouched in front of her and brushed some of her hair behind her ear as they conversed before raising himself up to place a kiss on her lips. He looked away. 

When Eleanora had left to go find Hannah to tell her the truth about Tucker, Tony had known that she wouldn't exactly be in great spirits when she returned. Which is why he had planned to take her out with Rhodey that afternoon before the man went to USAFA in a couple months, because he knew they got along well and wanted to make her feel better. 

Of course, everything had to turn to shit, as always. 

Tony gave a half-assed smile when Rhodey handed him a bag of chips and ordered him to eat it, grateful that he was letting them sit in silence rather than attempting to distract him. 

"Hey," a hesitant voice spoke up, making the two men look up at Amanda, who stood in front of them holding her arm. "I'm about to go in but, um, I wanted to say thanks for bringing me here. Would you be able to tell Nora I said thanks to her too? I hope- I hope she's okay." 

"It was no trouble," Rhodey assured her meanwhile Tony just nodded blankly and said, "Yeah, me too." 

Tony didn't know how long they had been waiting when the doctor, Dr Farrall, finally came out to tell them what had happened. 

"From what we can gather, Eleanora suffered a tonic-clonic seizure caused by severe hypoglycaemia," she told them. 

"Hypoglycaemia?" Tony repeated in confusion. 

"Low blood sugar." 

"No, I know that," he replied in annoyance. "I'm just confused about how. How was her blood sugar so low that it made her have a fucking seizure? That doesn't make any sense." 

"Mister Stark," Doctor Farrall began softly, "given that she's not diabetic and her blood work doesn't indicate any other underlying medical conditions aside from anemia, it was likely due to an eating disorder of some kind. Is she left-handed?" 

Tony blinked and nodded, wondering what the fuck that had to do with anything while trying to process what she had just told them. 

I've always had issues surrounding the idea of perfection, Eleanora had told him. It's more of an obsession, really. 

"She has what's called Russell's sign; slight calluses on the knuckles of her left hand, which can indicate repeated attempts at manual self-induced vomiting, and therefore suggest bulimia," she explained. "Not all bulimic individuals develop Russell's sign and obviously the scars may be from something else, but given the circumstances and a couple of other factors... I'd say it's pretty likely." 

"Other factors?" Rhodey questioned. 

"Well, her heartbeat is slightly irregular, her skin is dry, and there's also her low blood pressure. Once again, there's a chance they're unrelated, but they are all effects of bulimia so until we get more information it's certainly not something we can rule out. She's currently asleep - her body is probably very exhausted and needs to rest for a bit so we won't know for sure until she wakes up. We've got her on a glucose drip to restore her blood sugar levels and rehydrate her. I'll keep you updated."

"Thank you." There was a pause as the woman walked away. "Tones?" 

Tony swallowed, still struggling to comprehend the news. "I can't... I don't... she never..." 

"I know." 

"She was about to tell me, Rhodey. She snapped at me today out of the blue and walked out and I was really confused but then she came back to apologise and she was so close to telling me. She was talking about her issues with trying to be perfect and then the earthquake came and I thought it could take a backseat for a bit y'know? I didn't realise how bad it was. And then I noticed her acting weird but I just thought it was shock or something so I didn't say anything. And then..." 

"You can't honestly believe any of this is your fault." 

"I should call Katie. She'd wanna know... hopefully she's at their apartment." 

Tony heard Rhodey let out a sigh as he walked away to find a telephone. He didn't understand it, why Eleanora would go to such extreme lengths, hurting herself in the process, to achieve her idea of perfect when he thought she was- well, when there was nothing wrong with how she looked. Like, at all. He didn't understand how she could think that her pattern of eating was a better option than having a bit of extra weight. Frankly, he was still wrapping his head around it all, bits and pieces in his head locking into place bit by bit. 

"Hello?"  

"Katie? It's Tony." 

"Um, hi," she replied, voice conveying only slight confusion. "What can I do for you, Stark?" 

Tony let out a breath and twirled the cord around in his fingers. "It's... it's Lenny. After the earthquake we found this girl with a broken arm so we brought her to the hospital but then while we were waiting, Lenny, uh, she collapsed and had a seizure." 

"What?! Holy shit, is she okay?" 

"Yeah, she's okay now. It was a hypoglycaemic seizure, they reckon it was caused by an eating disorder... probably bulimia." 

"Oh my god... I-I had no idea. I fucking live with her and I had no idea."  

Tony didn't know how to respond to that without being a hypocrite. "It's not your fault," he said anyway. "No point dwelling on it now, anyway. She's asleep at the moment, they've got her on a glucose drip to get her levels back up." 

"Stanford hospital, right? I'll be there when I can. Not sure when that'll be considering everything's a bit of a fuckin' mess right now, but I will be there." 

"Thanks... I'll see you then." 

About twenty minutes later, as Tony was on the verge of falling asleep on Rhodey's shoulder, the sight of two people hurrying into the hospital caught his eye. Two people whom he recognised from that time he had seen them storming out of Tucker's house - Eleanora's parents. They had a brief conversation with the lady at the desk before moving to take a seat. However, the woman froze when her eyes landed on his and narrowed, before she stalked over to him, her husband following behind. 

"Stark," the woman addressed coldly, not even looking in Rhodey's direction. 

Tony wasn't sure what the fuck he had done to elicit such a frosty greeting from her when they had literally never spoken before, although the fact that she knew enough about him to dislike him did please him. 

"You must be Mr and Mrs Myers," he replied politely, before blurting out, "what are you doing here?"

He was referring to how they actually knew what had happened, but he knew it sounded bad as soon as it came out of his mouth. 

"We're her emergency contacts, you insolent boy," Mrs Myers snipped. "They called us as soon as she was admitted." 

"Bet she doesn't know that," he muttered under his breath. He knew she most likely would have scratched their names off her emergency contact list as soon as she was legally allowed to if she had remembered it. She was going to hate it when she found out they were here. "Is this how you usually interact people you're meeting for the first time or do you just not like me?" 

Mr Myers let out a scoff and crossed his arms over his chest. "Eleanora was doing fine in her studies until you showed up." 

Tony raised his eyebrows. "You really wanna do this? Okay, first of all, she is and always has been doing great. Secondly, contrary to what you may believe, she is quite capable of making her own decisions and if she didn't wanna hang around me, she wouldn't. Thirdly, not that you'd notice because she doesn't like spending time with you, but she's actually been happier lately, which should be way higher on your priorities than her fucking grades." 

"She's happier?" Mrs Myers challenged. "Is that why she starved herself half to death?" 

Tony clenched his jaw. 

"You're aware that she's in a happy relationship, right? With a man that is actually responsible and won't ruin her life so stop trying to get between them." 

He let out a mirthless huff of laughter. "Of course, she hasn't told you, has she?" 

"Told us what?" 

"She broke up with your precious Tucker. Turned out he was engaged and had been for a couple years. And for the record, I never was trying to get between them, Lenny is my friend." 

"Lenny?" Mr Myers repeated with distaste, apparently not liking the nickname. Good. 

Tony rolled his eyes. "I think it's pretty fucking interesting that you're discussing my friendship with her as if a) it's any of your business, b) when I just told you she was being cheated on and you apparently don't give a shit and c) when she's in a fucking hospital bed because of your impossible standards of her." 

He heard Rhodey hold his breath beside him and vaguely wondered if that was an inappropriate thing to say. 

"Are you implying that this is our fault?" the woman responded icily. 

"I'm not implying that," he shook his head. "I'm saying it." 

Just as Mr Myers took a furious step forward, Doctor Farrall appeared, awkwardly clearing her throat as she glanced between the two parties. "Eleanora's awake. She said she's ready for visitors-" 

"Oh, good," Mrs Myers nodded, starting to move away. 

"She's just requesting Mister Stark, at the moment," she hastily continued, making the woman freeze and glare in his direction. "Come this way, sir." 

"Thanks, doc," Tony smiled politely, shooting a smirk over his shoulder at the older couple.

"And who are you?"  he heard Eleanora's father demand impatiently as he followed the doctor away. He glanced back again and gave Rhodey an apologetic look. 

He'd be fine. 

• • • 

Eleanora knew that shit was about to get really awkward, but when the door to her room opened and Tony walked in, she underestimated just how badly she'd want to bury herself in a hole.

"Hey," he said awkwardly after a moment of silence, standing hesitantly by the door.

"Hi," she replied quietly. "So... what exactly did they tell you?"

Tony bit the inside of his cheek and let out a soft sigh. "Hypoglycaemic seizure... most likely caused by an eating disorder... specifically bulimia."

Well, shit.

Eleanora looked down at her hands, suddenly unable to look the boy in the eye out of shame.

"That's what you were about to tell me, right? Before the earthquake."

She nodded.

"But then you decided that that wasn't dramatic enough. You had to faint and have a seizure in the middle of the ER."

She cracked a grin and finally looked back up to meet his eye. "Obviously. I wanted verve."

Tony let out a small laugh and took a few steps closer to her bed, his expression quickly dropping again. "You, uh... you really scared me, Lenny. Rhodey, too. And the shower girl. You're parents seemed more concerned with having a go at me, though, which-"

"My parents are here?!" Eleanora cut him off, panic flooding her body. They couldn't know, they couldn't.

Tony grimaced and nodded.

"Please don't tell me they told them too."

"They had to," he responded, expression pained. "They're your emergency contacts."

Eleanora buried her face in her hands, lungs constricting and insides twisting. "Fuck!"

"Lenny..."

Tears started to pool in her eyes and she angrily wiped at them, frustrated at herself for allowing her parents to have such an effect on her. They were going to hate her, they were going to judge her, they were going to be ashamed and embarrassed.

"C'mon who cares what they think?" Tony asked, sitting down beside her bed.

"I do," she whispered. "And I hate it but I do care what they think. I don't want to but I can't help it."

"Just because they're here, doesn't mean you have to see them. You don't have to talk to them if you don't want to."

"I need to, though. Because if it's not now, they're just going to bring it up later and I can't avoid them forever."

"Sure you can," Tony said optimistically, making a small smile pull at her lips. "Lenny... there's- there's nothing wrong with you, okay? You don't have to do this to yourself."

She looked away again. "Yes, I do, you don't understand."

"Then help me to."

"Don't you see?" she asked, and met his eye. "I don't either."

"I wanna understand it, Lenny. Just... explain it to me as best you can."

Eleanora didn't want to explain it. It was humiliating and she'd rather take it to the grave. But then she made eye contact with the boy and maybe it was everything they had been through together already or maybe it was the patient way he was looking at her, eyes expressing only care and concern, not judgement.

She sighed and leant back to stare thoughtfully up at the ceiling. "It, um, it started as a stress thing, actually. There were a couple times I was so ridiculously stressed and anxious about something that I felt like I wanted to puke, but I wasn't going to, so I... I made it happen and it actually made me feel better."

Tony nodded and reached forward to hesitantly place a hand on her forearm, listening intently. So she continued, more reassured by his hand on her am than she expected to be. 

"And then... the progression was pretty gradual, which is why it took me so long to realise it was a problem. It was originally just when I occasionally ate too much food, or food that was really unhealthy, and felt sick so I'd- I'd purge to alleviate that. But then over time, my standard of 'too much food' grew lower and lower and it- it consumed me. My whole days became centred around food and planning how to avoid it or planning when I could... get rid of it.

"I knew, logically, that it was really fucked up, that it wasn't healthy at all. But it was- it's like there's two separate people within me that are playing a game of tug-of-war and feeding off each other. There's the instinctual, ravenous part of me that wants to eat all the time, even when I'm not hungry and then there's the insecure, self-loathing part of me that doesn't want to touch food, but neither of them are really me, and they feel separate to me, but they've got the wheel. And the more I try to avoid food, the more I want to eat and then when I eat, the more I want to avoid food.

"It's- it's an addiction. Or rather, two separate addictions that facilitate one another. There's the side of me that is addicted to eating and constantly thinking about and craving food even when I don't need it, just for the brief moment of enjoyment I feel while eating.

"And then there's the side of me that is addicted to trying to obtain a- a perfect body and constantly thinks about everything that's wrong with me and how much weight I'll put on if I eat something and how easy it is to undo what I have eaten... how if I throw it back up then it's basically like I haven't eaten it... a cheat.

"And it fucking sucks because I know how damaging it is, I know that it doesn't even get everything back out. But during those- those times, it's like I become another person and all I can think about is how heavy the food inside me feels and how I just want it out and 'just one more time won't hurt', except it's not 'just one more time', it became every fucking day, to the point where I'd be throwing up bile and I'd be getting severe stomach pain.

"And then once I'm done, I suddenly return to my normal self- whatever that is -and I just- I hate myself for letting it happen and letting it get this far and not being able to get out of the cycle. I want to get better, I do, but when- when you hate yourself that much... you don't want to treat your body right, it doesn't feel worthy of it. I've come close to stopping before... I was clean for nearly two months at one point, and then I fell and I fell hard. It was... violent."

Tony's hand squeezed her arm lightly - comfortingly - and he gave her a small smile, albeit sad. "Thank you sharing all that with me. That can't have been easy. It, uh, it seems to me like you do understand it." 

And he was right, she did understand it to a point, but admitting that she understood made it feel like this was a choice. If she understood it, why couldn't she put an end to it?

"Not enough to stop it."

"I don't think this is something that can just be 'stopped', Lenny. You said yourself that it's an addiction, and addictions aren't choices. No one chooses to be addicted to anything, and if they were easy to kick, they wouldn't be called addictions in the first place."

"I'm just... I'm so tired," she breathed, voice cracking. "I'm tired of all of it. I'm tired of thinking about food and I'm tired of hating myself and I just want to be happy with who I am."

"You'll get there," he promised. "It'll take time and work, but I know you can do it. We will do it."

A fond warmth bloomed in Eleanora's chest, a rush of affection for Tony urging her to hug him. Instead she just smiled gratefully at him, hoping it conveyed her appreciation for his support. "Thank you, Tony. I can't-"

"Eleanora?" Jackie, one of Eleanora's nurses, poked her head in the door. "Your parents are outside and they're, uh, quite insistent on coming to see you. I can send them away if you want me to-"

"No, that's fine," Eleanora interrupted with a tight smile. "You can let them in. Thanks, Jackie."

"Okay," the nurse replied hesitantly. "Give me a buzz if you need anything, sweetie."

Tony's warm hand dropped from her arm as Jackie went to go get her parents and Eleanora felt slightly colder. "Do you want me