tony stark. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
propulsion) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2022-06-17 03:07 pm
propulsion) wrote in faderift2022-06-17 03:07 pm
Entry tags:
clopen.
WHO: Tony Stark and the Ironettes, and some of my other guys.
WHAT: Business as usual, probably.
WHEN: Just generally Justinian
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall, etc.
NOTES: Some open prompts in the post for any and all, but also a gathering place for some specific starters.
WHAT: Business as usual, probably.
WHEN: Just generally Justinian
WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall, etc.
NOTES: Some open prompts in the post for any and all, but also a gathering place for some specific starters.
Nightmares are just another excuse to join the insomnia brigade, a disparate club of people constellated around the Gallows, lit rooms, lit hearths. Nowadays (nowanights?), Tony often takes himself and his restless hands out of his private quarters, now that he has a full human woman to share personal space with and she might not appreciate the sounds of tinkering and miscellaneous farting around one wall over.
So his colleagues might find him in the peace room, drinking coffee at stupid o'clock and going over paperwork, or those who know him well might hear the sounds of clicking tools being worked and set down again in the Research work spaces, where it is much too dark to see by the single candle he has going, but that's what enchanted sunglasses are for.
During the day, he is:
- jogging, sometime past dawn, stairmastering down the tower and then running a circuit through the expansive courtyards, and then out towards the docks, before the day has a shot at getting unbearably hot and sticky;
- chained to his desk to make himself, you know, available, some paperwork stacked at his elbow while he desperately seeks some dopamine by carefully folding a paper airplane instead;
- clattering a plate of pizza down on a taken table in the dining hall, and while it's a little lopsided, it is at it promises to be, melted cheese and flat circles of meat, everything sliced into slices;
- at the training grounds where the archery range is set up, wearing some light-weight leather armor and a more elaborate gauntlet, with articulated loops around the wrist he is adjusting. "You know the story of William Tell?" he says, positioned not where the archers are, but standing amongst the dummies, which should probably be some kind of sign. "Me neither, but probably worked out okay." He readies a defensive stance. "Hit me."
no subject
But it can also create, and that's what Tony specializes in. At least in her eyes.
"That's so fucking cool," she breathes, completely honest. "What do you think you're gonna do with it?"
no subject
He loops his arms around his knees, then, a slightly stiff criss-cross apple sauce sitting position. It's one of those rare times of day when the sun is high enough that the gigantic shadows of the Gallows structures around them doesn't throw everything into shade.
It's almost nice, for a prison fortress. "I was operating off a theory," he adds. "About how anchors were the key to getting back to where we came from. So maybe I build something that reverses whatever process happened to make us appear here, even if that meant—"
His fingers spread, meant to connote something. Obliteration. Dispersion.
"Anyway, didn't work. But I learned some stuff."
no subject
Ellie doesn't, now- but maybe that's easy when she doesn't think there's anything left for her there.
But, well. He has something. A couple of somethings.
"It's probably more than a lot of the people here bothered learning."
no subject
He had, too, seen that look cross her expression, and feels moved to clarify: "There's no ticket home for me, if there's any tickets home for anybody, which I'm coming down on the side of probably not. I'm just putting the scraps to use."
no subject
He's not the first of the permanently displaced she's met. He won't be the last. But it fucking sucks every time.
So she settles down, sitting with him, letting the thoughts and words settle. She doesn't have any good words of comfort for him, nothing heroic or moving, and has the feeling he doesn't want them, not really, but.
"... how'd it happen?" she asks, picking at a blade of grass.
no subject
Still. The cringey avoidance grates. And he's sitting with a rifter who's been through not one but more than one changes in dimensional status, so he can at least brush up against it.
"Big fight," he says. "End of the world stuff, so I made the sacrifice play, and I'm pretty sure it took, so it could be worse. And for the record, this go around, I'm gonna opt not to do that, if at all possible." Splays his hands in emphasis, relaxes them. "We got a lot of heroes in house already."
no subject
"Well," she says, pulling up a few blades of grass, letting them fall between her fingers as she looks sideways at him.
"I feel like, if you had to bite it? That's a pretty badass way to go."
no subject
a little flip, but the glance and the crooked smile kind of sneak in something half-way sincere. Thanks, he would like to think so. It's such a big thing, dying, and the circumstances surrounding it. It's not even a matter of Tony's willing that it's hard to talk about. Logistically difficult as much as traumatic. What a pain in the ass.
Okay, enough sitting. Tony draws his feet in to lever himself up, getting to his feet without any swooning at all. He dusts off the seat of his pants with one hand, offers her a help up with the other. "Now the mission's to die in the stupidest way possible. Tragic archery accident, somethin' like that. You know, if old age is off the table."
bow on this?
Ellie takes the offered hand, reaching back to dust off her breeches, the bottom of her tunic.
"At least make it something funny to write on your headstone."
it's a wrap
And thanks for not telling him he'll already be dying of old age by default.