clopen.

[propulsion]

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.

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."

Comments

[propulsion]

Tony hasn't gotten a lot of practice in, condensing his own weird rifter shit into palatable content. On Ellis, on Joselyn, two people predisposed and/or obligated to absorb whatever it is he has to say. Since he's been here, Tony Stark has done what everybody at home would never have expected him to: talk about himself a little less.

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."

[notathreat]

Ellie listens, then purses her lips, working through the feelings on that. It's a lot. It's complicated. It's something she can't help but respect. Tony's still a puzzle with a lot of missing pieces, but each time they talk, he makes total sense.

"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."

[propulsion]

"Thanks,"

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?

[notathreat]

Is there a healthy attitude you can have towards your own death? Hell, Ellie doesn't know, but... well. Interdimensional rifting will fuck you up in a thousand ways. You just cope.

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

[propulsion]

"Pithy one liner? Sure, I got some of those in me," Tony says, unbuckling the gauntlet as he leaves the field.

And thanks for not telling him he'll already be dying of old age by default.