revivalproject

Entry tags:

Burden

WHO: Tony and OTA??, though a few people are getting mentioned (Kaz, Jon, Cayde, Ronan?, Bucky?, this is already falling apart)
WHERE: Around Temba where all of those people can be found
WHAT: Tony's delivering gifts again
WHEN: A little while after the Eyepocalypse
WARNINGS: There could be talking about the event-related trauma in here, but none of that to begin with.
NOTES: You can interpret this as catching Tony at any of these places to interact with him, or just find the package and text him later, or not respond at all and just know you have this thing in your life now. I'm not your boss, surprise me. You may also intercept a package that isn't for you, unless the rightful owner tags in here first and claims it. Fight.

It wasn't like he was getting much sleep, so Tony had plenty of time to work. He had some apologies to make, first and foremost, and only some of the construction was like rocket science. It was the deliveries that turned out to be challenging. Most of the Iron Man's helmet was finished, too, before he was making his reluctant way through the city, D.A.T.A. bumbling along behind him to cover more ground quickly and let Tony retreat again before he lost his nerve. It wasn't like the blood wasn't already on the ground.

None of the packages were very big, easy for the robot to carry and wrapped neatly in scraps of what felt like toasted paper, which crumbled under too much handling. Small, brass tags fixed them together, bearing the name of their recipient to be found at their doorsteps.

...at the Bloodsport
A soft, squishy package labelled with KAZ. Inside, laid carefully on top of each other and smudged slightly in the ash of the paper, is a pair of black gloves whose texture is closer to vellum than leather. Maybe its this thinness that lets the wearer sense so easily through them, and interact with touchscreen devices. Its not at the sake of durability, though. A knife will leave a mark, but that's not how you're getting through these gloves.

...at the library
A small, cylindrical package labelled JON. To different people, this might look like a high calibre bullet, or a gold tube of lipstick. It's a sleek electric lighter, though. No patterns on the case.

...at the clock tower
This package clatters slightly when it is moved, which might be worrying because it only has the explosive hazard symbol on the label. If it is handled gently, you'll find a pair of generously heavy dice inside. They're slightly oversized, and feel like they might be solid iron all the way through. Every time they are rolled, they always turn up on an ornately stamped pair of feathers in place of snake eyes.

...at the theatre
Another squishy package, though this label just says 'FOR NEXT TIME'. It's another pair of black gloves, though these ones don't cover the tips of the fingers or the thumb at all, and there seems to be a distinct weight to the knuckles. They cover most of the way up the forearm, like they might be part of some kind of...superhero costume...

...at the hotel
About the size of a chocolate bar, and labelled JAMES. That black vellum-looking material has been formed into a small, stiff domino mask. Its eyes are darkened with some kind of glass. Try it on, and it will prompt you to pair with your communication device, and suggests vaguely on this HUD 'TRY ME'.

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While he was regretting saying it, now that it was out Tony had been more poised to convince Cayde of the possibility of Ikora's return, ready to point to Jon, and to Steve, and even Natasha, and, alright, maybe they weren't exactly how Tony remembered them, but they were here. He deflated slightly when Cayde rationalized her disappearance instead, not about to argue that he thought anyone should be here. It definitely was better this way, for Ikora and for what they had left back home. Just not better for Cayde. Tony shouldn't have been so eager to slip away.

Still looking distant, Tony pursed his lips and gave a minute shake of his head to answer Cayde's question, like that might be all he was willing to say on the matter as long as those wounds were still fresh. He couldn't exactly leave it at that, though, so he did tip his head and admit, "Well..." It was possible. The dice didn't look threatening, at least. As Cayde largely failed to keep the paper from crumbling to dust, Tony continued, "She's a powerhouse. I can't fill all of that space. But if you want to, uh, do something..." He didn't really know how to finish that, how anyone else took people leaving. To Tony, it felt like a death, and he wasn't eager to suggest a funeral if that would only make it worse.

Even with the possibility there, Cayde wasn't sure it was right to hope that maybe Ikora would come back, or some other familiar face would pop up. It didn't hurt any less knowing she wasn't around, a repeat of when Holliday had gone missing. It wasn't losing them for good, he knew that- knew how that felt enough to know the difference, but it only dulled that pain of absence just a bit.

He stubbornly tried to fight the flaking giftwrap before scowling and brushing his fingers at it with more purpose to watch it disintegrate until he saw what it had been attempting to hide. The package had already been slightly weighty so it wasn't surprising seeing it contained metal. Cayde rolled the dice in his palm, seeming to smirk a little as he saw them turn up with dual feathers. Then he sighed.

"Hey, look at it this way- we were spared whatever she might've been warped into with all that," he said, gesturing with his other hand as though there was a possible way to convey the madness of the events not a week past. "...and vice versa." He shook his head, curling his fingers slightly around the dice as he rattled them around his palm. "Can we just do something dumb? Doesn't have to have any point, just- we can have a laugh, not think about stuff or be reminded about stuff. I realize the latter will be difficult but there's gotta be something."

That wasn't a great possibility to consider, so Tony sucked in a sharp breath at the thought, head tilted with a grimace. It wasn't easy to picture Ikora losing control like that, but Tony was glad he didn't have to see it, and had to nod slowly to agree if only to avoid talking about it with any more intent. So focused on not being weird, his eyebrows jumped with a chuckle of surprise at Cayde's request for being dumb, not because it was a terrible request, but because Tony didn't think they'd have to work too hard to get there and they had never had to say it out loud.

"You can make those blow up in someone else's face, if you want," he suggested with a nod toward the dice, "But I figured you'd want to save them for a special occasion. It's not your birthday or anything, is it?"

True enough that they never asked for permission to do dumb things, but hearing Tony's laugh was a good enough reaction that Cayde was eager to put whatever unpleasant things they'd unintentionally brought up behind them. He stopped jiggling around his hand, upturning his palm with the dice again.

"Sounds kinda painful. How's that work?" he asked, flashing that crooked grin of his. "I'd say it was just to see how they work, but if it's a one time deal I'd rather save 'em for something good. -when's your birthday?"

"Yeah, just the one go, haven't made the repeater-grenade yet but it's in the works," Tony replied, overlapping with Cayde so he was looking very thoughtful with a finger tapping on his chin by the time he was done, like he had to think very hard about his own birthday. "It could be today, I'm definitely overdue. I've always prided myself on being a delicate spring flower, and we don't know what hemisphere we're in."

"Right, so how do I make sure I don't set these off accidentally?" Hearing that they were actually explosive has made him take a little more care in jiggling them around like regular dice. He'd hate to waste a good gift.

"Heh, yeah, I think birthdays seem the least thing people tend to think about around here. At least the Twins seem committed to trying to remember theirs," Cayde laughed.

As though Cayde blowing himself up hadn't crossed his mind at all, tony gave a lazy shrug and tucked his hands into his pockets, eyes rolling up toward the sky as he chewed on his answer. "Don't worry," he insisted, "Accidental triggering chances are only moderate, but you could make them high if you're really committed to a good time." He finally risked wandering a little closer then, appearing to second guess the instinct and drifting around Cayde in an arc in his approach, and raising his hands to demonstrate the motion in the correct direction as he explained, "You have to put them together, feathers touching, and twist. They're a pair, they work better together. Well. If you're into that kind of thing."

"Gambling in more ways than one..." Cayde mused in amusement as he studied the dice, taking one in each hand so he could look at each face better as he rolled them between finger and thumb. He held each feather up and towards each other, if still apart, nodding as he turned his wrists one away and the other.

"Got it. So you were just gonna leave these here and let me find out or not if these things went off?" he asked as he slid a look at Tony, lifting a brow.

That wasn't fair, and Tony pouted, hands to his injured heart. He had put a warning, after all, and trusted Cayde to be smart enough to respect it. Besides, "You can't possibly think I would be so stingy to just give you some normal dice. And only two of them!" They might have found themselves strapped in this situation, but Tony thought he had earned a better reputation than that by now. Belatedly, leaping to the next worst possibility, he accused, "Hold on, who else have you been accepting gifts from? I thought we had something special."

The dice clinked against each other lightly as he tucked them into one palm again, swiveling his wrist to set them rolling about again. He didn't bother to try smothering a grin, but he fared worse in holding back a laugh at Tony's mounting accusations.

"Your face! All I meant to imply was that you were just making the drop off and running off like you were planting a bomb!" He snickered, shaking his head as he leaned back against the wall beside the doorway. "Anyway dad, no need to get jealous of Alberto just 'cuz he gave me a nice shell once. I miss that kid."

Cayde's laugh was as charming as ever and almost managed to break Tony's indignant moue, only for it to deepen with a click of his tongue and restless fingers drumming over his sweater as Cayde hit his stride and didn't seem to mind as much as he probably should that Tony looked like he was setting traps for him. They had deftly avoided that so far, though it was Cayde that should have known better than to focus too closely on the missing players on the team. With some tension still in his jaw, Tony did his best to swallow down his discomfort, and made to give a preformative shake of his shoulders when he found he had already tucked his hands securely away in his pockets again. "You know, I set that up and was not prepared at all for taking the hit. Run that by me again, let's try some variations," he prompted, turning an expectant ear to Cayde like he might actually indulge Tony with a variety of paternal nicknames.

Navigating conversation without stumbling across some bitter trigger was like wandering through an industriously seeded minefield. He knew he was blundering into murky waters again but by then his mouth was already running as it tended to. Cayde slipped the dice into another pouch on his belt, leaning towards Tony to nudge him with an elbow.

"Gotta be on your toes, Pops! You're just lucky I don't have many secret admirers here. I think your top contender's better at the secrecy though. All those gifts are top quality, excellent craftsmanship- reveals a very deep and thoughtful personality with a hint of nostalgia. Honestly I don't know that I've seen a better guitar at the best bazaars in the Last City and those are some fine pieces of pre-Golden Age artistry."

Tony's wince might have been for Cayde getting close, making him tuck his own arms tight against his body, or for the name, because he still had one eye winked shut as he talked over Cayde the moment he tried on 'Pops', "That one is worse, that's a downgrade, you really should treat your father with more respect." Which at least saved him from looking too outright jealous before it became obvious that Cayde was teasing him. It left him only squinting suspiciously at what was, precariously, very effective bait that had him wrinkling his nose defensively at being accused of being nostalgic before he was covering it with an impatient nod, looking up the street like he was entirely bored because they weren't talking about him. Cayde didn't know as long as Tony wasn't admitting anything.

"Don't get too confident about that deep and thoughtful act. They probably only want you for your body," he dismissed, then let his gaze roll back to Cayde with a fangy smirk. He couldn't imagine being that kind of person. "You've been reading too many of those romance novels. Hey! That's what we could do. Sundance, you're a gal about town, you've been checking the gossip column, I know it. Which one of these beautiful people has been spending their time painting?"

Edited (I probably didn't even fix the worst thing) 2021-11-08 03:15 (UTC)

"Yeah," Cayde had to agree with a nod. "Sounded bad the moment I said it, Pa." He coughed unconvincingly, peeking past the edge of his hood as he watched Tony's face with a grin.

"Oh, undoubtedly. I know I'm irresistible," he sighed all too dramatically with a full-bodied shrug. And then it was his turn to gasp at the accusation of his reading choice, folding his arms with an overly petulant huff. "Do not," he muttered.

"A short list," the Ghost responded without even materializing, her voice transmitting on their local frequency. "So far as I've noticed, you're definitely the one who spends the most time through customized color schemes. If not pink and red accented in glitter then definitely red and gold."

Cayde didn't have to watch too closely, because Tony physically recoiled at this attack on his delicate sensibilities, swooning like he might actually faint then looking to Cayde with wide, wounded eyes to demand, "How old do you think I am?" Only grandfathers were 'pa', he was sure of that. "You were kinder to me when you were biting." So flustered, Sundance's disembodied voice had him looking up like he could see some part of her in the air, and turning a slow circle in a new, moody swoon, battered by Cayde and without even Sundance's radiance to soothe him.

"I'm so glad you noticed and thank you, those are the best colours and I do look delectable in them, you've always had such good taste," he took his chance to preen, hand still on his bruised heart but the other raising a finger to make this important point with a flourish. "But I more meant, someone who might have the talent to capture that beauty themselves. We're going to make a mural."

The Exo was all giggles again, leaning back into the wall. He wiped at an imaginary tear. "Look, it only gets worse from 'dad' and you knew it. I suppose I could be formal and go for 'father' but I feel like I need to use my Zavala voice for that and that'd just get weird. Well, weirder."

A mural though? He glanced around a shoulder still hunched in preparation of another fit of giggles, curious to see where this was going. "No wonder you like Sundance," he had to comment. His Ghost wasn't kitted out so shiny as Iron Man, but she bore a red streak across her standard gray, her top and bottom-most points of her forward half crowned with a curve of gold.

"I haven't seen those particular talents commonly exhibited to make many suggestions," Sundance admitted. "Reeve has been observed to draw."

"And we're not being weird here," Tony agreed, very seriously, pointing finger still up, "We're being dumb." While Tony was regularly reminded that he had a vast talent for both, there were only two people willing to encourage either that he could name, and he was lucky enough that one of them was here. To convince Reeve, all they were going to have to do between the two of them was pretend it was a lot less dumb than it sounded.

"Then we'll ask Reeve. He's basically an accountant, so we're going to have to approach this like people with desk jobs. A proposal. Whaddya say, sweetheart, can you write us a proposal? I would do it, but, you know, my arthritis, Cayde was always a heavy kid, dense, carried him for as long as I could," he rambled, turning in circles again but now with energetic intent and hands waving. "We can do it at that big building Lauri-Ell's been fixing up, I've already got some materials there from painting on a tennis court."

"Yes, exactly," Cayde nodded at Tony. Dumb is a completely different breed from weird. He continued to nod thoughtfully as plans to snare Reeve into things were laid out- pausing to scowl at him here and there. "Hah. Daddy, you're so funny. -whoa, okay, somehow that just topped the worst list. I think I'll stick with Pops."

"I'm not your secretary," Sundance noted. She wasn't the writer of the pair anyway.

Cayde grinned at the exchange, drumming his fingers restlessly over an arm at a niggling thought before snapping his fingers. "Echo! -sure, he doesn't look it but I'm pretty sure those blue markings weren't standard issue." The Exo shot a look over at Tony to see if he was following. Sure, maybe it was a stretch, but they could still have another to pull into this.

"Oh, there it is..." Tony purred with a wicked grin even as Cayde lamented, batting his eyelashes as though this wouldn't definitely make it worse. Tony didn't expect to get much fun out of this without Alberto around anymore. Hopefully, Sundance had that 'daddy' on record.

"I'm looking to fill the position. I hear the pay is incredible," he tried to encourage, because he really had been languishing without Pepper to keep his life together. Unfortunately, she was also the one that decided how much she got paid, so he wasn't in a great position to make the negotiations. Cayde having his bolt of inspiration saved Tony from trying to lure a Guardian's Ghost into a day job.

"Brilliant, he must be very precise," he agreed. "And he's far less maintenance than Reeve. Just point him in the right direction, really."

That was definitely a pinched look of distaste on Cayde's face as he shook his head at Tony's eye-batting, reaching out to apply a hand over that bearded face with a friendly nudge back. Yeah, that was enough of that.

"Yeah, just tell him it's a mission or something. You just can't tell him exactly what it entails until he's got a brush in hand, then there's no backing out of it," he nodded. "Worked with the zipline."

While Tony didn't quite flinch away at the contact this time, his nose was still wrinkled in a wince and his laugh began sounding strangled until he allowed the shove to put a step between them. "Then I'll get the colours ready, and you can lay down the first lines--" he started before Cayde had finished talking, effectively distracted by the zip line to look up and spot it and consider for a slightly stunned beat. "That was him?" he had to ask, pointing up. They might be able to get away with more than a few silly portraits if that was the case.

He still wasn't even sure what they were painting but by now he supposed they were as good as committed. Slinging an arm around Tony's shoulders, Cayde blinked and then laughed as he followed Tony's glance up towards the rope between the two towers.

"Nah, that was me," he clarified. "But he came in while I'd hopped over to his place to find somewhere to secure the rope. -okay so there was a slight sidetrack but in the end he didn't complain. Much. Oh right! I was gonna ask if you could help me figure out a better thing than a bent piece of rebar to use." He waved a hand. "Anyway- So, lines, paint, some slight deception..."

Still looking up at the rope, clearly already beyond the painting thing, Tony answered vaguely, "And we have a mural of everybody, the whole team..." Some battered scrap metal was definitely not the best way to travel, but sounded like a lot of fun to Tony so before he made the appropriate upgrades to make the zipline more secure, he pointed again and asked, "That'll take us right to him?" Not that he needed the answer to that question.

That was going to be a tall order, but Cayde found himself smiling all the same. At least there'd be a place that'd preserve something of a memory of the people who'd been brought here, even after they'd inevitably have to leave. He didn't let himself think about the when's and how's, but he considered how to drag Reeve into it all the same. That was a lot of linework.

"Yep," he nodded. "Well, if he's in, anyway. Good chance of that at least, he usually patrols early morning and just before things get dark." His free hand swept outwards and towards the door of the clock tower in open invitation.

The thought of Echo actually having a home that he returned to honestly hadn't occurred to Tony yet, picturing him exclusively in full armor and upright at all times like a toy soldier, so he pouted as he was briefly torn between leaping on the zipline immediately, and waiting for that evening patrol to have the chance to inspect how the soldier lived without restraint. As usual, immediate lack of restraint took precedence over potential future lack of restraint, and Tony didn't need to be invited a second time, realizing only after he had darted away from it that the weight of Cayde's arm had been on his shoulders and he had hardly registered it. He stumbled to a stop then in the doorway, reaching back to grab the Exo by the collar and drag him in after him and keep him close so he wasn't taking any leisurely route up and making Tony wait, all the while talking, "I didn't know you were so close. He has nothing but nice things to say about you, of course, but I thought that was just a little crush, you know, armor to armor, he really laid it on thick. An unavoidable personality, I think he said, really fills up the room, can't be ignored."

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