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
A word falling like a stone. Weighted down with all that comes attached to it.
Ellis' jaw works around something. Some sentiment he is turning over in his head, stripping down to the barest parts.
It is nearly imperceptible, the tilt of his head. But it comes as they speak of this, this dream, the Deep Roads, what Ellis might find there. A slight tip towards seemingly nothing, because what is there to hear but Tony? The Gallows is quiet, in spite of all the unrest contained in the main hall or the adjacent offices.
(But there is something. Whispers, chillingly harmonious, rising and falling as Ellis speaks. Something he's heard before.)
"It is a bad way to die," Ellis says slowly, "Dragged into the Deep Roads by darkspawn."
A bad way contains such heavy, ugly things inside of it.
"I don't know if it's what became of them," is tacked on a tempering explanation. Ellis doesn't know. But he fears it.
no subject
Tony finds that this news isn't surprising but only because it makes sense, in an awful way. It makes sense, too, as it settles and he can turn it over in his mind, why Ellis guarded it as fiercely as he has. There's no actual shame in losing people, in being the one that doesn't die when everyone else does, but—
"I was seventeen when I lost my parents," offered kind of lightly, more of a reprieve, somewhere to go for a moment. An offer. "I wasn't there. Found out later how it happened, when I thought I knew. They were run off the road, killed. Knowing doesn't exactly help, but then again, I don't dream about it."
More importantly— "I'm sorry," he says.
no subject
There is a pause, Ellis' attention drawn wholly back to the room and to Tony, sitting across from him. Realizes, abruptly, what has been omitted and the picture it paints. Tony wasn't there. Ellis has no such excuse.
His head shakes, silent rejoinder to the offering of apology. Comfort. That's predictable, maybe.
"I was eighteen."
How had he said the truth of this to Wysteria? It's necessary to pry it up from the scar tissue, offer it over. Ellis can't abide Tony carrying the wrong understanding forward, even if the consideration of it comes wrought with dread.
"I'm sorry," repeated back, for the story. For necessitating the sharing of it. Sincere, even as Ellis tries to parse out something beyond the immediate topic. "You needn't speak of it, not on my account."
no subject
Easy. Factual. It isn't irrelevant but it doesn't keep him up at night, not anymore. Plenty of other demons for that. Talking about it is fine.
Ellis was eighteen. That's plenty grown up, in this old timey world and his own, to feel like you should have done something about it. Is that it? The weight he quietly drags around behind him? Maybe not, maybe some of it. Tony brings up his tea to drink, thinking it over. What to do with this thing he insisted on receiving.
He kind of wants to ask—
"Mine were Howard and Maria. Who were yours?"
no subject
His thumb sweeps along the crooked fingers of his left hand.
"Dugald," comes softly, Ellis' accent gone thicker over the words. There is a stretch of quiet, before Ellis proceeds along to: "Odette."
His head lifts, meets Tony's eyes as he relates, "I was there. And I left them."
This too, is half of a story. But to Ellis, this is the only part of the story that matters. The part that quashes whatever generous estimation Tony has made of him.
no subject
All the same—
"You were a kid," he says, quietly. "And I bet good money that's all they wanted you to do."
It's not the place or time to tell Ellis how and why he might understand exactly how any parent should feel, the easy sacrifice, and he doesn't know anything except for the softness with which Ellis said their names, but that's why he asked.
no subject
Not a kid.
It stands in for something far more kneejerk: It doesn't matter.
What does it matter that there was nothing to be done? Will that ever outweigh the full weight of his choice in that moment?
There is nothing else to say.
no subject
He would like to simply lift this off of Ellis, job well done, survivor's guilt cured, but all he can do is this: a free and easy lack of judgment, and not out of ignorance, even with some cards still clutched to chests.
Soberly, "You went through something hard. Fucked up. I'm sorry."
no subject
He shakes his head, brow knitting into a deep frown.
"Don't be."
This isn't Tony's to bear. There isn't a single part Ellis would have him carry.
And it is intolerable to observe Tony take all of this in stride, return this truth with empathy. Ellis won't hear it. Can't hear more of it.
no subject
but not really, probably. You don't take back a sorry when it's the real thing. But Tony says 'okay' as if to release Ellis from the torment of this conversation, a sigh in the background of it. He doesn't say you've met Flint's child labour lawsuit, Matthias, right? as an example of what an eighteen-year-old looks like. But he could.
Thinks, instead. Says, "You don't belong down there," and adds, "No one does."
https://i.ibb.co/chgf861/image.gif
But it isn't.
The flinch away from the sentiment works its way through Ellis' body slowly. A tension in his shoulders. A tightening at his jaw. Biting down hard enough that his molars ache with it, because Ellis knows that a contradiction will initiate a conversation neither of them want to have. That Ellis still regrets having with Silas.
Regardless, it's too much to bear.
"I think," Ellis begins slowly, emotion flattened from the words. "I should let you get back to your project."
And then, as he finds his footing, focus sharpening, to add, "Or to try to sleep."
no subject
He's gonna count this as Ellis surrendering, and not him. Tony looks towards the work station he'd been labouring over, and it doesn't call to him. A warm bed, a lady in it, that sounds a lot nice. Still, he sips his tea, doesn't rise up out of it yet, a sudden change in tone and tactic as he says,
"We should get outta here. Not now, I mean, like a trip. We can write it off as a business expense if we accomplish something at the same time."
no subject
"Where?" is as good as agreement.
The first thing, nonsensically, that comes to mind is Orzammar.
But that likely isn't what Tony has in mind.
no subject
Or, says a swervey tip of Tony's head. "Either that or the next awful bog-adjacent jungle adventure we all have to go on. But those can be fun too."
googles "does dragon age have coconuts"
And it is a stretch to consider they might find the kind of good time Tony is loosely describing in a bog.
"Aye," is agreeable enough, regardless. "The bog is more likely, if we're needing an excuse."
As a man who has accompanied Riftwatch agents on many an expedition, Ellis feels it safe to presume they would be more likely to find themselves in a swamp. The few times they've gone somewhere nice, it's ended very poorly.
googles "when were coconuts invented"
It's a brief detour into whimsy, the gravitational tug of dreams and nightmares, childhood regret and violent death being a powerful kind of force still present in the room. They should go and sleep it off. Oooorrr—
Tony gestures aside with his teacup. "I got a chess board stashed somewhere in here."
nearing bow territory y/n
(There is a space in which Ellis weighs whether he would rather be alone. Whether it would be better to sit with the specters that have been dredged up and drawn close.)
But eventually, he looks over to Tony. Offers up, "You'd have to teach me."
Faintly apologetic. But not a refusal.
bow time
And getting up, trotting off to go retrieve the promised board.