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WHO: Tony Stark, Loxley, Marcus Rowntree, and your fine selves.
WHAT: Tony works a forge, Marcus trains, and Loxley invents sunbathing.
WHEN: Covers off Solace.
WHERE: Around and about.
NOTES: Probably just a couple replies per prompt would make my life easier. Select the man of your choosing. Feel free to convert to action spam style tagging, I don't mind nor care. If there is something specific you want to do, let's wait a week, big AC-related wink, or hit me up in inboxes!

tony stark;

Clang. Clang. Clang.

These are the familiar sounds coming from the smithy, where it is almost unbearably hot. The air tastes of smoke and metal, thick with the occasional cloud of steam. The forge is burning with colours of bright white and yellow rather than gold at what Tony approximates to be probably 2800 F, maybe hotter. It's at his back with his attention paid forwards at the anvil, on which he rests a glowing-hot length of metal held secure in tongs in one gloved hand. The other hand wields a hammer, bringing it down onto soft metal with almost trance-like consistency. Embers spark and catch on his wrists, his arms, but only occasionally.

He almost looks the part. A coarse leather apron drapes down from his waist, and he's wearing a sleeveless jerkin of similar material, keeping arms exposed to the warm, fire-flecked air. The stand out difference would be the goggles he has fashioned himself at some point -- round, tinted lenses, secured with a strap. He flips whatever he's making around as the heat begins to leech from the iron, and Tony Stark resumes his meditative assault of hammer falling upon metal. He's been doing this for a while, now, arms soot-streaked and slick with exertion, muscles tense even where he grips firm the tongs, from wrist to shoulder.

As the iron turns from bright white to fading orange, he turns to shove the potential sword back into the furnace, and, pulling off his goggles, brings his forearm up to wipe his brow. Not necessarily in slow motion.

marcus rowntree;

It's getting late into the morning, the sun creeping towards one of its rare clear sky zeniths. Marcus Rowntree has the space mostly to himself, so it would seem, and who can blame anyone. It is hot as shite. But he has used this excuse all week not to do much of anything, and so he has summoned himself out into the training courtyard to roll through the motions of combat. Exercises, mainly, a collection of stances through which he moves his heavy, bladed staff through the air in swoops that are both powerful but controlled. Restraining the easy urge to let gravity and momentum wrest precision from him.

It's nothing they taught in the Circles. In his Circle, anyway. He came to all of this quite late.

Anyway he is also shirtless.

And when he is done, blade hitting the ground in front of him with a flicker of fire scorching the earth, he is breathing harder than he had been before, and drops the staff into the dirt beside him, runic incisions on the metal flashing hellfire orange for a moment before dimming. He is already walking directly to the barrel of water left out for this purpose, and at first, hovers his hands over it. A glimmer of blue light dances off the murky surface, cooling the water within just a little. Marcus picks up a bucket, matter of factly submerges it into the water, and brings it back up, full, to tip over his head, flicking wet hair out of his face as he does so.

loxley;

But all of that sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it?

Loxley is opting for leisure, when he can find it, and with a natural resistance to fire, has never feared the potentially damaging effects of prolonged exposure to the sun. Back in Tassia, when his hue was a bronzed-gold, he tended to darken up quite handsomely, and he's noticed, now, the qunari grey actually has some pleasing undertones of silver when it's in a certain light. So he is reaping the benefits on a lovely afternoon, having found an area of the island coast unbothered by deckhands and ferries and the like, and, after laying out a woolen cloak he has brought along for this sole purpose, lies upon it like a lizard beneath the open sky to sun himself. Quite a few pieces of clothes have been set aside, his weaponry resting atop of it, down to just a light pair of shorts and some dark-lensed glasses that the Research academics had been developing some months ago.

He is on his belly for a while, and you'd be forgiven to think that he might just be fully asleep, until he rolls his lazy way to lie on his back, positioning an arm under his head.

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"Aye, I remember it."

Memorable only for the unsettling tension between them, something that had seemed easy to leave there once they'd emerged. Ellis hadn't pressed for an explanation. He doesn't see the need to revisit that now, though apparently they're about to.

Ellis doesn't volunteer any of those impressions. Like so many of their conversations, he trusts that Tony will make his way towards a point. The big difference is this isn't a discussion about experiments or Kirkwall's inadequacies or Wysteria's attempts to safeguard her tea stash. The conclusion will inevitably be something Ellis would have preferred to leave unspoken.

It's more than a little infuriating to have to finesse the conversation one way or another when Ellis is sitting across from him with his stupid handsome face and probably completely cognizant to what kind of information that Tony is seeking. The question of whether or not it's any of Tony's business is the kind he doesn't all the time ask himself.

"They said," and Tony feels stupid for citing sources that amount to pixie lights whispering sweet nothings in his ear, but here we are, "the spirits, the whatevers that were there, they said that you're keeping quiet on something. And, you know what? That's fine. I don't need to know everything."

A beat, and then some tension breaks as he adds, "That's not true, but that's not your problem. Okay, look--"

Bold of Ellis to assume Tony will get to his point, but he takes a shortcut, abruptly.

"Tell me right now there isn't something you're keeping from us that we'd wanna know. Maybe need to know. That would be important for us to know."

Edited 2020-08-02 09:23 (UTC)

Alistair's advice comes to him very clearly: if your friends care about you, I think they ought to know.

But even so, Ellis feels the weight of all the things he has never said aloud to another person and finds himself at a loss as to which of them he should offer up. There is the obvious one, perhaps the most inevitable, enduring one: the taint in his blood, the looming, grisly death that waits for him. Or perhaps there are his sins of late: comrades, brothers, whose throats he opened under the burning sun to feed a lie. Or what he'd done before the Joining: carriages smashed into ditches, jewels and purses wrenched from screaming travelers, the splatter of blood on his skin afterwards when it all went poorly

The silence has gone on too long. That is an answer in and of itself, no matter what Ellis says after.

"Wardens keep a lot of secrets," Ellis says finally, slowly. In that regard Ellis has always been exceptionally well-suited to the order. "Preserving them is part of my service."

It's not a denial.

"Do you remember the joke you made when we first rode out together, beside the campfire? About the taint?"

Off to a great start. Ellis sounds miserable but probably not because of the high potential for innuendo this conversation took on.

"Yes," Tony says, "it's a sensitive area."

The corners of his mouth twitch.

Damnit.

He flattens his hands on the table, fighting down the extremely inappropriate giggle that is threatening the sanctity of this conversation. His paranoia is now ramped up to an eleven and he desperately wants to know what Ellis is about to tell him but come on. "I'm sorry. Please continue what you were saying."

Ellis looks just. so fatigued.

The joke should be helpful. It should break the tension a little, remind Ellis that divulging this information is not going to break anything that hasn't already been broken by the Wardens who came before him. But Tony's innuendo comes to him as if from a great distance, plinking against his consciousness without registering fully. It's the same way Joppa's humming had come to him in the Underdark, so far from him in those moments that it might as well have not existed at all.

"It's an infection," Ellis corrects. "Anything living, any person, any animal, any plant, they'll sicken and they'll die. Darkspawn carry it with them. It matters less when they're driven down deep, but on the surface, during a Blight..."

Ellis sweeps a hand vaguely at the room, the people around them, all vulnerable. Whatever the darkspawn didn't tear apart, they infected, and what is infected, dies. It's almost the whole truth. The manner of their death is what becomes important, but the enormity of it is hard to pare down to a few sentences.

"You can kill darkspawn by the hundred, and a thousand more will take their place. They don't stop. The taint doesn't stop," Ellis continues. The words fall like stones. "You can feed soldiers, strong, capable fighters like you, or Marcoulf, or Barrow, or Coup, to the hoard and the taint will ruin them. They'll go down from infection if they aren't killed outright in battle first."

He pauses here, perhaps to allow Tony one last opportunity for a joke Ellis won't fully understand, or because he is treading so close to speaking aloud something he knows is a secret. Alistair's assurances don't make breaking his oaths easier. His voice has fallen quieter and quieter, pitching beneath the conversation and song around them. Ellis has already made his choice, but he can't help the last hesitation, stalling against the moment where he goes against his duty.

They don't stop. There is a new kind of tension that has settled on Tony, now, different from the fidgety energy, a palpable discomfort of someone who knows way too well what this concept is like. What it looks like, how it weighs on you, a peripheral ever looming threat of cosmic millions.

But there are enough specifics to wrench him from that particular spiral. Infections. Ellis is talking about a disease. A disease he has.

"But you're immune," he says, following along.

"No."

His tone doesn't waver, doesn't betray the relief embedded in this answer. No, he is not immune.

"It kills us eventually. But it works slowly. We have time to fight. We last longer. There's nothing to do if darkspawn tear our throats out, but we don't have to fear infection, because we already carry it."

That's the trade off, though Ellis omits the rest of the bargain. Joppa's voice comes to him, intoning the words, passing the cup. (Join us as we carry the duty that can not be forsworn.) The phantom tastes of blood and herbs and death rises like bile in his throat.

"And you need to swear to me you'll never speak of what I've just told you," Ellis says, suddenly intent, unease following in the wake of the memories. It's not leaving Tony much time to consider what he's said, a sparse as the admission has been.

"Why."

It comes sharp, and inevitable. Direct eye contact, and somehow a weird latent aggression in body language that is leaning back casual in his seat. Maybe he is waging some internal war against what Ellis is telling him sinking in. Ellis, helping, by not giving it time to do so.

"Why the big secret. Because what, because you carry it? Who cares, people aren't all the time stupid, and when they are, they think you get sick from miasmas or whatever."

Around them the tavern is quieting, chatter fading from the uproarious clatter of people piling in for their dinner to those lingering over their cups, clustered together to talk softly over their day while others left in search of entertainment or better drinks. The world continues around them, untouched by the weight of this conversation. It gives the impression of a cocoon, as if the two of them have stepped outside of their usual responsibilities and banter for this stretch of time.

The picture he's given Tony is incomplete. Ellis had known this, but it becomes more clear when he hears Tony talk around the effects of the Taint. Ellis' palm flattens against the table, as if he would push up to his feet, but the impulse passes.

"Because I gave my word when I joined them."

And the decision about whether or not certain things remained secret was not for Ellis to make. He can mitigate his decision to give Tony this information in one way only.

"And because I'm asking it of you, not to make a liar out of me," as if Ellis weren't dishonored in so many ways already, as if this is not the least and latest way he has let down his fellow Wardens. "Please."

"Don't give me that face."

God. God. How annoying. How just like him. How just like this place. Tony simmers in his seat and discontent, and says, "I'm not going to tell anybody. But when Wysteria inevitably finds out somehow through no fault of my own and flips her lid at both of us for keeping her out of the loop, it's your ass. Because this sucks."

His shoulders slump a little. Ellis's answer is not an answer, not really. The oath isn't the point. The logic is the point.

"How slowly," he says, still snipping his questions out flat and direct.

This question is the point. That they would arrive here is inevitable. Ellis has spent enough time with Tony to know how his mind works, how he inevitably begins to unravel what's set before him.

"I don't know."

Honest, if not satisfactory.

"I have felt it before. Before Burning Man," Ellis' voice sharpens around the repeated joke, tight and defensive around something painful. "Some say it can take thirty years. Some say the more time you spend in the Deep Roads, the sooner it will come for you."

It's not the way to talk of an illness. But the Calling is not an illness. It is a certainty. It is a comforting whisper in the back of his mind, reminding him that he is a dead man.

"I will know when it comes for me. I can't guess at when that will happen."

He wants to ask why again, why the mystery, but Ellis has already explained. The concept of oaths seem different to, say, promises. No one wants an oath, that's why they're oaths, and there's gotta be some loopholes.

But Ellis is telling him. Now, he's telling him.

And it's enough for those hackles that had half-raised since the Crossroads, and again here, to chill out. Maybe Ellis can sense it, the pressure of Tony's aggravation lifting.

Redirecting.

"So we have a problem," he says, after some thought.

Watching Tony across the table, Ellis is treated to what has become a familiar process. He watches Tony work over that information, resolve it in his mind, and move on to the next thing.

The trouble here is in what the next thing turns out to be. Ellis is not naive enough to think they go from this discussion back to reminiscing about people Tony once knew, or about whether or not they can lure the ghost into the basement long enough to see if it has an effect on the readings there. Ellis shifts in his chair, leaning back but not slouching, one hand on the table as he waits.

And inevitably, they arrive.

"Do we?" Ellis asks.

That's a stupid question. Tony doesn't answer it.

He has his own questions! Starting with; "How'd it happen?" He picks up his tankard, inspecting how much is left in there. "Means of infection. Zombie bite? Blood transfusion? Hey, should we get another one of these?"

Ales, he means.

Ellis pushes his own tankard across the table without comment.

"Are you asking about Wardens, or are you asking about anyone else?"

It's a calculated question, implicated a difference. It's not necessarily a complete misdirection; the Joining is not the same as what happens to people in a Blight, or people who are just unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when darkspawn tunnel through.

But still. Still.

"You, buckaroo."

Tony casts his attention out like he's fly fishing, locating Wench #2 and circling a gesture over head. Another round, please. He is talking to Ellis, however, as he adds;

"You gonna shoot straight for a change or are we playing this like Twenty Questions? Because I got nowhere I need to be."

"It wasn't an accident. I chose it."

Ellis would like this to be the end of the conversation. But at most, this feels like bypassing a question that skirts too close to the Joining rather than ending the conversation altogether.

"I knew what I was doing," he adds quickly, as if anticipating the next question.

Tony squints hard at him. Did you. Did you though. But these have been omissions of truths, not outright lies, so he mulls over the next strike at the stubborn clam shell as Wench #2 comes by to refill their tankards, which she does with careless efficiency, a little spillage, and an absence of giving a fuck if they don't talk to her.

Once she is gone, Tony picks up his cup, considers the many questions he has ready to go, but chooses this one; "Would you change it? Now, today, someone offers you a magical cure, you say what?"

Maybe there's some argument about Wardens not being particularly forthcoming, about how little Ellis had really known about what he was signing up for and whether or not he'd have even survived the Joining. But it's all a technicality, really.

"No."

The answer is delivered easily enough, without even a pretense at hesitation.

He could quantify it: there isn't a cure, there's a rumor of a cure but it's as likely to kill as it is to heal, there's someone who managed it but they aren't here to ask.

None of it matters.

"If someone offered you the opportunity to—"

There's a pause while Ellis struggles with the notion of superheroes.

"To stop what you do when you aren't here, would you take it?"

Extremely unfair.

Several pieces of shrapnel threatening to close in on his heart unanimously disagree.

And Tony can't even reconfigure his expression in a way that pretends like he doesn't understand and so instead masks it slightly by drinking more fantasy beer, which he is now beginning to feel and so sets the tankard down.

"Guess that makes sense," he says. "Make pals with some people that historical precedent says they're gonna disappear in a couple of months to a year. Here for a good time, not a long time, right? I need some air." He is on his feet, picking up his tankard as he does so, muttering the follow up, "why's every place gotta smell like feet--" as he goes.

Escape is at hand. Ellis could stay at this table, and let Tony go, and they likely wouldn't return to the topic. He hooks the handle of his tankard, wrist on the table, as Tony's footfalls recede.

It would be easy. It should be easy.

But it isn't easy now.

So he leaves a scattering of coin on the table next to his untouched tankard, and follows Tony.

There is a little strip of porch outside the tavern, two benches, a stool, a rickety roof more likely to leak than shield. Ellis finds Tony there, and takes the seat beside him. He folds his palms together.

"That's not why."

The leap from Ellis' impending and stubbornly inevitable death to Tony's assertion of Ellis' potential motives for friendship caught him off-guard, but Ellis doesn't feel he can leave it alone.

Tony is seated with his forearms on the rickety railing of the porch, hands hanging the tankard suspended over a short drop into the street. Nearby torches against the coming darkness have been lit and flicker and spit oil nearby, causing instant death to the flies that have yet to perish today that take a chance and buzz on near.

His energy is different, out here, more pensive all at once, as if that short walk across the tavern had burned off some of the more volatile, combustible properties of his mood.

Which doesn't mean he can't be a little shitty, as Tony replies, "Oh, yeah? Kind of convenient anyway." He tips his tankard to squint into it. "As convenient as a pair of death sentences can be."

Edited 2020-09-06 08:15 (UTC)

A pair of death sentences.

There is a moment, a drawing in of breath. A remembered snippet of song, terrible and inevitable, drifts from the back of his mind. His death sentence, well-earned.

"That's not why," Ellis repeats, because truthfully it hadn't entered his mind. Not until months later, when Wysteria had come to him crying and invoked it. "And I don't believe it's a death sentence, when you pass from here back to where you came from."

But Ellis can't say for sure. Tony's assessment would always carry more weight than Ellis' when it comes to theories about rifts and any other kind of science.

Edited (tacks on literally one word) 2020-09-06 14:22 (UTC)

"Belief is nice. We all gotta, in something."

Jury's out, for Tony. Some hopelessly optimistic side of him imagines waking up in his bed. Likelihood of dissipating into nothing pretty compelling. Something in between. Maybe it has to do with ruby slippers.

But it's not the same kind of death sentence that Ellis is facing down and he is, in this moment, way more concerned for that than the quantum nature of his own being, truth be told. It's just easier, sometimes, to make everything about himself.

"So it's coincidence, you're saying."

Edited 2020-09-07 11:04 (UTC)

"No, not a coincidence."

Though Ellis isn't sure of that statement. He balks at the idea Tony presented, that Ellis had chosen him out of some expectation that he would be gone. If anything, Ellis has assumed he would go first, pass out of Tony and Wysteria's lives into the dark the way he has assured himself will happen sooner or later.

"I didn't anticipate you," Ellis amends slowly. "When I came here, I didn't expect friendship, but now..."

There is some urgent, wretched movement, as if Ellis would get up. The agitation resolves itself into the clasping of his hands, as if wringing the emotion out.

"I'm devoted to you," Ellis says, borrowing what he had already once offered Wysteria. "I don't have any right to your friendship, and I didn't intend it, but that is the truth."

Looking back, he can't even fully discern a point where things had tipped from casual acquaintance to actual friendship. It had happened almost without Ellis noticing, and now he was too entangled with Tony and the rest of them to see a way of extricating himself without hurting them too.

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propulsion - 2020-09-14 10:13 (UTC) - Expand

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