revivalproject

Entry tags:

Scour

WHO: Tony and anyone who wants to suffer
WHERE: The forge, Temba
WHAT: Tony's finally back from Not-Temba, and doing some housekeeping
WHEN: Mid-august
WARNINGS: It's a Tony post. It's safe so far, but watch your step.

The forge was rarely quiet.

Even in Tony's absence, the place hadn't been entirely empty; he could see traces of Catra's visits in the little messes she had left around, like he might not notice among the mess he had left behind himself. The D.A.T.A. unit struggling to manage its awkward limbs, still under development, followed Tony from its watchful crouch at the top of the door to display exactly how useless it had been in trying to pick up after either of them in the meantime, kicking a bolt across the floor in an effort to grasp it and stumbling like a baby deer after it. Tony sighed as he watched it slip on the rotting skin of some fruit that some trespasser had been eating from the meagre store he kept at the back of the room. At least it hadn't gone to waste. Evidently, there wasn't going to be any relaxing done here until someone cleaned this place up.

It was a large building, but the space inside was dominated by the furnace that Tony coaxed back from its constant, low smoldering to a hungry crackle that belched sparks and thick plumes of colourful smoke from the chimney high above him as he tossed garbage and glitter into it alike to clear the floor. Circling around behind the fire was a shivering, metal staircase that led up to a series of catwalks overhead, where Tony had to balanced to try to knock the fur from the beams and walkways where Catra liked to lounge the most, and scare the spiders out of their cobwebs and try to bat them directly into the flames with his broom. Beneath him, the worst of the dirt fell to coat his workbench, making him roll his eyes as he bent to peer over the railing. The bench sat in the path directly from the door, facing the fire, equal parts wood and metal bolted to the floor and then built up in a scaffold that reached all the way to the catwalk above where its weight looked like it might threaten to drag the whole thing down. It was laden with works under construction; more D.A.T.A. units, a handheld vacuum, a bronze ape's skeleton, a myriad of gloves, boots and chestpieces, and buckets full of heart-shaped glitter. Closest to the bench were places for Tony to hang his larger tools, that he had to scavenge around his own shop to find, dust and replace. In between all of these pieces were rare scraps of paper, pinned between the tools and crafts without obvious reason; a treasure map, a drawing that looked like someone was trying an impression of the still in the Deep End, a love letter with a three-eyed smiley face. There wasn't any other paper to be found in the forge; drawers and baskets under the bench were full of nails and wires, broken glass, and what looked kind of like the Mandalorian's helmet. Behind the workbench hung bodies.

From the catwalk above and braced by loops of wiring, some glowing faintly and others trembling at too much movement like they were on the verge of falling apart, suits of armor in various configurations hung for access. Most were decapitated in some way, arms and legs hanging separately, and some pieces appearing entirely alien to the man that most of them were meant to fit. With an irritable instruction, the D.A.T.A. unit clambered up among the wires to begin releasing some to clatter riotously to the stone floor, a crashing and racket that continued as Tony hauled the dark curtains the made up most of his bedding outside to shake out in the fresh air. It wasn't much more organized out here, but there were more wires looping from a window around the back of the forge to another bench that had been set up in among the larger pieces of scrap Tony had claimed and left languishing in the grass until they were needed. He hung these linens over the wires, shooing away a brightly coloured parrot that squawked a complaint, and gladly returned to settle comfortably on the fabric as Tony went skulking back inside. There was a bucket of black water sitting still next to where he hammered by the fire to cool the metal, and he kicked that across the floor to start sweeping the water and the grime it picked up with it out the door. A glint of gold caught his eye at the edge of the sunlight, stalling his energetic sweep to pluck the chain up out of the dirty swill and consider it thoughtfully in his palm before he was throwing it carelessly onto the workbench and retreating with a decisive slam into the small bathroom at the back of the forge.

The D.A.T.A. unit obediently pushed one of the discarded armor pieces across the slick floor, struggling to balance and shove it up the low wall with a scrabbling of delicate legs, and fell back triumphantly as it tipped the armor over into the mouth of the forge and greedy lick of the flames. For a moment, the fire sputtered, with a crackle of bright sparks as the D.A.T.A. unit toddled to its feet again.

In a deep, rumbling boom that made the stones on the dirt road outside skip, a great, black plume poured out of the forge's chimney. Inside, the D.A.T.A unit was thrown back against the wall, and the room was coated with sizzling soot and flecks of orange embers.

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The fussing around for something to do with his hands was familiar, as was the smack that Tony took as much as an indication to move as it was retaliation for this line of inquiry, not that it was nearly forceful enough to put a stop to it and instead had Tony wrinkling his nose with a laugh while he made the vaguest overtures toward making room on the bench. Mostly, he leaned back on one hand so Cal wasn't talking into his shoulder. He lit up with the assurance that his ploy had worked, at least fundamentally, and Cal had noticed Tony trying to show Merrin off, though it would be even nicer to know for sure that it had prompted Cal into some action. "Oh, yeah, she showed me some moves," Tony grinned, giving a wiggle where he sat with the wrench he still held ticked back and forth like a metronome, eyebrows raised inquisitively. Cal saw that, right?

Tony's teasing glimmer dimmed slightly with this explanation. There must have been plenty more kids that the Jedi didn't manage to recruit that could use some version of the force, and it didn't sound like those kids were where the Jedi problems had started. "Do you think she uses them wrongly?" Tony pressed, watching Cal with his cold calculation for any signs that he wasn't being fully honest, but it was mostly a neutral question.

Cal rolled his eyes at Tony's wiggling, setting to work in trying to remove the D.A.T.A. unit's broken legs so he could try to see what was actually in need of repair. "Yeah, I saw. Saw you trying...something, too," he said with a shrug and a smirk.

He didn't answer immediately, taking care with the robot he was working on. Maybe something got crushed, or the wiring was pulled loose inside. If it were the leg parts itself maybe it could be salvaged just by removing the damaged ones, at the cost of having shorter legs, but at least it might work until something better was figured out.

"No," Cal replied after carefully detaching one of the legs, inspecting it. "She used her power as she knew how, and as she felt she needed to." In that, there wasn't too much difference from how the Jedi applied their abilities in the Force.

"What she can do with her magick is a lot different than what we do, though. It's more..." He lowered the leg, head tilting as he tried to think of an appropriate word. "Raw? And it has a more direct application. I think the most direct a Jedi can be in use of the Force is influencing minds, and that doesn't always work. Merrin's magick does a lot of things that a Jedi can't. Teleporting, invisibility of some kind..." That was what it had seemed like, anyway. He absently pat the robot before he started working on the leg again. "And then there's the whole bringing her dead sisters to life..."

"Something?" Tony echoed, offended by this poor critique of his dance skills and crossing his legs and arms primly, where he could tap the tool he twirled around restlessly against his bicep. "It's natural to be intimidated," he allowed with his own wry smile as he watched Cal work. The D.A.T.A. unit blinked back up at Tony, looking quite complacent with the development until Tony raised his eyebrows at him and his camera eye shuttered entirely closed, shutting down. No more risk of shocks to Cal, and Tony didn't have to try to process the concept of limbs being removed through the damaged static.

The list of potential magics, of both the Jedi and Merrin's people, had Tony raising a lip briefly in discomfort with how much more complicated that made dealing with the natural world. He shouldn't have asked. "Could she teach you to do that then?" he asked more idly, less concerned about the spiritual specifics than he was about Cal's many futures.

The padawan was unable to keep a grin from his face at the exchange, shaking his head again at the unsurprising rejoinder. He did cast a glance between the little robot and Tony once the former had closed its eye, but resumed his work. It wasn't too different from repairing and upgrading BD-1, at least.

The question in follow-up gained a thoughtful frown from Cal. "I'm not sure. I know that the former Jedi that I ran into out there on Merrin's homeworld was seeking to learn how to use her power, but I don't know that he got that far, or how possible it would be." He wasn't really sure how interested he'd be in trying to learn such things. "I hadn't really considered learning how to do what she does. I'm still trying to polish what I know," he admitted with a laugh.

Without quite knowing what polishing could mean, Tony could only join with a lopsided smile and uncertain laugh of his own, brow knit inquisitively. "You can already throw me around and--see the past, I think you're doing pretty good," he said, not to mention the light-sword thing which Tony acknowledged belatedly with a small jump of his shoulders and waving around of his wrench more like a magic wand. He had know idea what the top of Cal's game looked like, just that that kind of thing would likely make him at least an alpha-level mutant on Earth. If it was a mutation, anyway. Merrin was making it sound like this Force-control was a talent that could be learned, which made the baby-claiming and clone-making much more...well. Tony frowned, clutching the tool in his fist against his chest.

"It's kept me alive," Cal had to agree, shrugging a shoulder as he turned back to the task he'd given himself. Maybe he could make this work. Remove the working legs, replace some of the damaged parts with the portions that would be taken off to make them all even length, if a little shorter, but it would give the D.A.T.A. unit mobility once again.

"I've been out of practice for five years. Going through forms with a lightsaber or practicing anything through the Force would have drawn the Empire's attention- that's what happened anyway, but I didn't have a choice at the time." He compared lengths, nodded to himself and resumed.

"I had to remember things pretty quick. My lightsaber work is probably sloppy compared to the other Jedi here. Some things just kinda click back into place, and trying to avoid getting killed is a pretty good incentive too. The lessons I learned Force-wise took a bit longer to recall, and I'd only barely gotten back to the level I'd left off on some time just before I found myself here."

Now Tony felt bad for bringing it up, dropping his prim posture to slouch slightly and leave his legs crossed at the ankles, swinging restlessly as he considered his wrench like he had just realized it was there. After all of that, it should have been fairly obvious that the last thing Cal deserved was to be hard on himself, he endured enough punishment, but it didn't sound like Tony's opinion on his lightsaber abilities was going to be worth much. It did probably look cool no matter who was swinging the sword.

He only perked up as it suddenly occurred to him, "You mean--they have some way of tracking you, if you use it? Just practising on your own, someone would have noticed?"

Cal glanced at Tony, picking up on that dip in his mood, maybe, not for the first time, but he supposed if things were measured out it would be in subtle waves of such moments. "Not exactly, but I was on a planet controlled by a guild working for the Empire. The Jedi had been branded as traitors, and that soon after the war, anyone being able to use strange abilities or seen swinging around a sword of light was going to draw attention."

He looked down at the reassembled legs, satisfied at their matching lengths. Time to rewire and reattach. "And aside from being stuck in questionable territory, there were probe droids everywhere, basically watching for any suspicious activity. Guaranteed to shoot off information the moment something caught their attention. That's probably how I was found out so quick. One probably reported the incident."

A bunch of snitches was not nearly as useful as some kind of device or people similarly attuned to the Force picking up on its use on the other side of the planet, or the galaxy, and Tony pouted with some disappointment that they weren't going to be able to lure their unwitting rescue party to them. It could have still been possible to build such a device for himself to found out how alone they really were in this star system. Tony took a breath to start to excitedly propose this to Cal, only to abruptly realize, "Traitors to what? Being born without those powers?" Which did sound a lot like mutants on Earth, since Tony was already thinking about them, so maybe designing a device to track them down was more nuanced than hoping to find a friend in the system.

That would take a bit of background explanation, and Cal paused his arc-welder as he considered how to go about it without diving into the whole thing.

"I heard about only afterwards, but apparently the Supreme Chancellor claimed that the Jedi tried to assassinate him. He also claimed the title of emperor and established the Galactic Empire right on the heels of the Purge and the war's end," he explained, deciding to get right to the main point and leave background for questions if Tony had them.

"Master Kenobi said that the whole war had been orchestrated from the start, and being rid of the Jedi was part of it." That revelation still didn't cease to bother him. There was a lot he didn't know, that probably none of the Jedi knew even now, but that someone had planned everything was sickening. "He said it was the Sith who were behind it. They're the opposite of everything the Jedi stand for, they wield the Force for power."

That all sounded more like a bloody crusade than the simmering hatred of mutants that Tony was thinking of; 'Empire' wasn't as much of a quirk of translation as Tony thought it might have been. It was pretty directly illustrative. So Tony watched Cal as he spoke with lips parted with some pained fascination, the restless winding of the wrench in his hands slowing. He knew a convenient excuse for a war when he heard one.

That didn't stop Tony from immediately responding, "You were ready for a war, though." With a vague gesture toward Cal's belt, where his lightsaber hung, Tony tipped his head and narrowed his eyes.

"Not necessarily," Cal said, leaning his hip against the bench as he glanced at his lightsaber. "True, we learn how to wield a weapon, but the places we go to aren't always safe, and playing peacekeeper doesn't mean that where we go tends to be peaceful. I think most of the time before the war, the Jedi were sent in to mediate. But once it was clear there was an unavoidable war, it probably influenced a lot of the preparation we as learners were given.

"I won't lie, a lot of us looked forward to our first battles, to fighting alongside our teachers. A chance to prove ourselves, I guess. For those my age, our training as padawans was basically going to battle and learning as we went. The Jedi were few, so not many masters remained at the temple, not when the Republic made them the ones in charge of their armies. We were spread out."

It kind of sounded like Cal was apologizing for that enthusiasm to put their skills to the test, so for that Tony shook his head slowly, then tipped it onto his shoulder to study the softness still in Cal's cheeks as he muttered, "You were a kid." Of course they looked forward to those battles. And it didn't sound like they had much of a choice, the battles were coming whether they wanted them or not. Someone was dropping the bombs.

Tony straightened with a sharp breath, where he could juggle the wrench again as he stared out toward the fire and admitted, "I still get excited after a good fight. When it all goes well, and--nobody drowns." With a brief smile, he glanced rapidly to Cal then back to the fire. Cal probably didn't really need to be told as much, they had seen enough action together by now. "When it's a bad one, though..." He gave an exaggerated shrug, and figured Cal didn't need to be told that either, because he'd had his fair share of his own bad fights. "It's really bad," he sighed. "The kids--you know, Billy and Tommy, and their friends back home--for me, they're, like, 15, and they've got these getups, and they've got these powers, and when we try to tell them to slow down--Listen, you've met them, you see how that works out. And its because they think that we're worried that they're not strong enough, that they're going to get hurt. And--we are, of course we are, but I'm not worried that Wiccan can't--" Tony snapped his fingers and waved a hand, magic, make a city out of nothing. Then his shoulders dropped again, and he frowned, contemplating the tool he still twisted around. It was hard to hear that no one was thinking of the kids like Cal the same way, but Tony gave a dry laugh and said, "You probably wouldn't have listened to me, either."

In that, Cal could agree. His smile flickered into existence with Tony's, perhaps lasting just as long. Tony returned his attention to the fire and Cal to his arc welder, adjusting the output a little.

He understood well enough. His master was trying to prepare him as best he could, but once things suddenly went all wrong, it was like Cal had no idea what he was doing. "I don't think it was quite the listening part that I had trouble with." He'd wanted to do things right, and under controlled circumstances, he could get it. "I wasn't prepared for my allies to suddenly turn on me and my master. I still can't help but think about the things I could have done differently, if maybe I'd been more careful or more alert... I could've helped my master and he wouldn't have..."

Cal closed his eyes, sighing as he moved to stand away from the bench again. "...but things didn't go that way. And I know I was only so old then, but I know I still had a responsibility." He tested the arc welder, gently turning the D.A.T.A. unit so he could begin to reattach those legs. "It just took me long enough to really accept that. I can't change the past, but...I can try to be better so I can be there for people when they need me."

"No, listen, that's exactly what I..." Tony tried, but he only had this wrench and not the tools he needed to properly express himself, so he trailed off with an irritable frown at his own hands before he could try to put the pieces together. "That's not the kind of lesson you should be learning already. You should be figuring out how to talk to girls and what you want to major in and how much you like--painting, or whatever, and if you can help some people out along the way, that's great, but it's not your responsibility. No one's death is your responsibility." Telling Cal that didn't mean much now, his heart was already broken and that was one thing Tony still didn't know how to fix no matter how much he tried, he was just frustrated that he even had to explain that to Cal in the first place. "And--it's not that I wouldn't rather have you there with me the next time some plant tries to eat us."

The concepts Tony spoke of made more sense to him now than ever. He had memories of that sort of childhood that seemed to be what normal consisted of in the world Tony was from, vague experiences of going to school, of adventuring in the local neighborhood with Merrin as kids. But he knew even in that world and in fake ones that there were still chances for things to go wrong, something drastic to happen. Just maybe not so drastic as the path he'd had to go down.

"...it might not have been my responsibility, but I was my master's. What happened then was like everything was saying I wasn't ready. And I know I was still in the process of learning, and that things were out of my control, but that didn't make me feel like any less of a failure to my master."

The sparks from the arc welder began to blur slightly in his sight, so he switched it off, closing his eyes for a moment, taking a slow breath. Just because he'd accepted things didn't mean it wasn't difficult speaking of it. He'd made up his mind to move forward, but there'd always be those glances back.

"Being a Jedi has its own responsibilities. There's access to a power that can easily be used to do terrible things if we aren't careful. But I won't hide what I am anymore either."

That feeling was what Tony thought was the real system overload, what had killed more Avengers, figuratively or literally, than any bullets or all consuming forces of nature, and that Cal was aware of that didn't really fix the fact that his brain chemistry was already locked into a dire path because of it. Tony raised his eyebrows apologetically, sorry for continually driving Cal back to this conversation and still without any solutions, then quickly turned away to studiously consider his hands again as Cal took his steadying breath.

When he finished, he sounded like one of those Earth heroes again, not just a child soldier. Cal did have this power, and there was a whole universe of people who's lives could be changed with the slightest brush against it. "Do you ever with you weren't?" Tony asked, still looking to his hands.

Did he? Cal was pointedly focused back on his work again, letting the silence save for the faint snap of electricity fill in after Tony's question.

"...I'd be lying if I said I didn't. Being anything other than a Jedi once everything changed? Sure looked really appealing to a kid who didn't know what to do or have anywhere to go, or anyone to turn to. But I wouldn't know where I would have been otherwise, and on what side of the war. And even if I wasn't actively fighting for one side or the other, what happens after it all looks like it would probably still affect me one way or another." He shrugged. "Maybe I'd end up fighting against the Empire with less means." Or would he have been recruited? There were too many possibilities to think about.

It hadn't really occurred to Tony that Cal would be fighting anyway, most of his conceptualization of this Empire revolving around their resentment of the Jedi and a single, core-shaking vision of the obliteration of planets in Poe's head. That wasn't the kind of brutal power a kid took on. Poe did, though, he realized. And it was hard to imagine Cal keeping his head down when someone needed help.

"I'm having a hard time picturing what the other side would be offering to get you down that path. All of you that have come here--unless they've seen the writing on the wall and are keeping it under wraps, all of you have been the underdog, should be in the minority by all accounts, but you're all still on the same side. Even the--even Echo, who should be pissed at you, he's not picking ideological fights."

"That's not true. There were two Imperials here," Cal said, lifting his head from his work to glance back at Tony. "Eli was one. I'm not sure if you met Thrawn, but he was the other. But I think they've chosen that side for their own reasons. And honestly, I know it's difficult to think that there's anything to be offered on that side, but I know that one of the Inquisitors that's been on my tail was a padawan under the former Jedi I'm currently traveling with. And the other Inquisitors are possibly former Jedi too."

It wasn't out of simple offerings, he was sure. But he didn't know all the details of Cere's experience and Trilla's turning to the Dark Side. That was an different can of worms entirely, however.

"I'm glad no one's thought to pick up a fight here. There really wouldn't be any point to it anyway. There might be some wrinkles to smooth out here and there though. I had to mediate between Master Kenobi and Echo just to make sure no one got accidentally killed." That had been pretty tense, and ironically the only situation he'd found himself caught between a blaster and a lightsaber here.

This was a series of surprises to Tony, who had met one of those men and while he hadn't spent much time with Eli, hadn't even been under the impression that he was even from the same place as Cal. Maybe life did genuinely get better for some people without Jedi around. A bunch of kids separated from their families and trained for war had more than enough reason to take the first out they were offered.

More immediately, Tony didn't know that there had actually been that kind of tension after Echo's arrival after talking to Cal about it the first time. He seemed like he had it under control then, and wasn't worried--and Obi-Wan generally seemed unflappable. Echo was the one that Tony knew had killed people on Coruscant, so he narrowed his eyes then wiggled his fingers to ask, "Nobody mind-controlled him, did they?" That seemed like the opposite of smoothing a wrinkle, but would explain why Cal thought there was no point in picking a fight if that was how they were ending them.

It was too convenient to label things so black and white. Even after the Empire had taken power, after the clones had seemingly turned on their Jedi allies, Cal had had enough time to realize that even they had been used in a grander scheme of...something. He hadn't found out exactly what that something was until he'd gotten the chance to speak to Obi-Wan.

The question Tony chose to ask confused him a little. "Who?" he asked, brow arching as he looked up from his work on the robot. Almost done. Just one more leg. "I had to warn Master Kenobi- Obi-Wan, that there was an ARC Trooper here. He was coming from an even shorter time after the Purge than I had. I arranged for us to meet up with Echo, but I guess Obi-Wan felt the need to arm himself when he saw Echo arrive with a blaster."

Cal had just told Tony that some of the people they were talking about were capable of 'influencing minds', and the other had been those people's canon fodder, so Tony pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow back to insist that Cal really didn't have to sound so baffled. It probably didn't feel like it to Cal after the life in hiding that he had described to Tony, but part of recognizing the responsibility of the power he had meant recognizing the power he had over people, too. That one could be just as fraught as a bad fight.

"That's a fight you picked," Tony pointed out. "So some things are worth fighting over. You could have let them duke it out, not your problem."

"Not something I can do," he said with a frown in response to the look back. Obi-Wan was supposedly good at such things, but it still wasn't a simple matter. "I think it only works on weak-willed minds." That definitely didn't seem to be a case with anyone here, if that was what Tony was concerned about.

"Not my problem, maybe. But it's not something I was going to leave alone either. There weren't any other Jedi aside from me at that point, and Echo's a friend. Jon did the same thing for me when he found out there was a clone trooper here. It only made sense for me to make sure we were on the same page when Obi-Wan arrived."

It didn't look like Tony was entirely convinced by Cal's claim, but he slowly nodded and slouched back on his hands anyway, not about to make that a head on fight nor either to find out what Cal might have meant by 'weak-willed'. Maybe Ezra wouldn't notice if Tony tried to check in about how well those mind-powers interacted with Extremis, just in case.

What he really didn't mean to do was make Cal try to defend his choice to intervene, so he rocked the heel of his hand on the table to wave that off with a lopsided smile. "I didn't mean to suggest that you shouldn't have. You just said that there's no one picking fights, and we're picking our fights every day, just that usually we agree that its more worthwhile to let that go to get another pair of hands working in the diner."

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with? WITH??

when you with upon a thar~~

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