faderift | 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.

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."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's a clear weight to it, this confession. Tony's brow crinkles at the centre. Wondering what it is Ellis is bracing for. How could you? He clamps down on saying anything that is too automatic, an attempt to let that weight settle rather than immediately overturning it.

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.

"I was eighteen," to the tune of a gentle correction.

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.

"Tiny baby," Tony counters, playfully, in spite of the heaviness of everything. Sedate, due to the heaviness of everything. The corner of his mouth hooking up. "That's the deal when you have a kid, no matter how tall they get. The two deals. They're little forever," he ticks this off on his fingers, "and you want them to continue on from where you leave off."

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."

Tony means this as a kindness. Ellis knows that. It should be a comfort, but in spite of all good intentions, it is still a fistful of salt ground into an open wound.

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.

"Okay,"

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."

It should be a comforting thing to hear.

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."

"Yeah."

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."

Tony is allowing him a reprieve. Ellis is grateful for it, even if it takes him a few long moments to find the equilibrium necessary to dredge up a response. Reorient himself away from the memories he'd been sunk into and return to this room, the conversations they often have within it, the lightness that might color those conversations.

"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.

"Beach place," isn't Orzammar, although it's not far from Tony's mind either. If he actually says it, they might be in real danger of committing. Jealous, a little, of Wysteria's new found hand-less freedom, is how he might frame it. "Place with beaches on it. White sands, blue water, coconut shell cocktail. I bet everyone dresses sluttier the more north you go, too."

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."

Reprieve or not, there is some difficulty in switching gears to the imagining of a pleasant trip north.

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.

"Can't wait."

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."

The answer comes slowly.

(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.

Apologetic qualifier is, in fact, met with a spark of interest, and deeper beneath the surface, a hint of relief. Whether because Tony is not ready to sleep yet, or maybe not yet ready to let Ellis try, the nuance is lost in a tugged smile and a point. Even better.

And getting up, trotting off to go retrieve the promised board.

clopen.

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googles "does dragon age have coconuts"

googles "when were coconuts invented"

nearing bow territory y/n

bow time