Tony listens to Steve lay out the plan with growing irritation. Oh, it’s a good plan. It makes sense. It’s why Steve’s the strategist of the group and he’s not. He finds nothing wrong with the plan. What he takes issue with is his place in it.

He doesn’t miss the fact that he’s been relegated to searching the town, which to his mind is equivalent to giving the kids something menial to do while the grownups go out and do the real work. Just like he doesn’t miss the way Sharon looks at him when she speaks about how harmful the water might be to regular people. And he gets it. Of course he gets it. He’s a normal human. He doesn’t have special powers. He can’t heal himself if he gets injured, he can’t withstand physical trauma that would kill an ordinary person. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t bother him. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t hear what they’re both tactfully not saying.

Without the suit, he’s nothing. Without his fortune and his technological toys, he’s nothing but a man. One who doesn’t even have a gun. It knots his stomach into a tight ball of bitter frustration and makes him want to lash out them, to call them on what they’re doing and remind them that he’s Iron Man. But he doesn’t. Because he’s not Iron Man. Not anymore.

So Tony holds his tongue. He lets the soldiers speak and plan and decide things that, as a civilian, he has not place in deciding. And his eyes drift toward the forest again. Because he knows Bruce isn’t in the town, and he thinks that finding out what’s on the other side of those trees is their only hope of finding him again.