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'.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Hey, I'm not the one setting off accidental explosions," Echo called back, mildly offended by the assumption. Despite being low-key irritated by Tony's goading, the breath he exhaled almost sounded like a chuckle. "Give me more examples of how I'm getting out of hand an' maybe I'll consider it."

There was no ignoring the tension that still lingered after Jon's exclamation, brown eyes flickering to Cayde as he made the signal. "...Yeah. Maybe it was."

He should have noticed the signs earlier. Concern washed over his features as he watched the Exo head toward the stairs, voice lowered as he let his hands close into loose fists. "Cayde?" He hesitated, but would eventually get to his feet once the Exo was out of sight.

Edited 2021-11-17 07:08 (UTC)

"Tough." Jon whispers back at Tony with a snarl. "We all lost friends here that went home, but that's not a reason for him to be irresponsible and risk getting his remaining friends hurt. If he wants to try luring Sundance out by jumping off a building, stupid, but fine as long as he doesn't drag anyone else along who doesn't have a Ghost able to heal or revive them. Christ, Tony! Have you even bothered to look down?" Jon's attention is now entirely on Tony and he grips the man's upper arm while looking at him imploringly. "It's all fun and games until someone breaks their legs and we have to figure out how to properly set these bones with what limited resources we have here. And I really don't want this someone to be you."

That said, Jon releases Tony's arm and reaches for his hand to look at the scratches and make sure these get washed rather than just be physically present near some running water. It's something else to focus on for the moment. A distraction from having to fret over the possibility of Tony getting hurt. Jon lets his shoulders drop and slowly shakes his head, muttering. "Let's get these cleaned up."

Jon's snarl was easy to answer with a flirtatious smirk like Jon had just called Tony a sweet name instead, because Tony evidently hadn't been clear enough to distract him into blushing yet, but it quickly fell as Jon continued and Tony had to try to interrupt, "But nothing happened, everyone's fine, and it wasn't like he offered, I saw it and went up and I'm the one that made that choice and, honestly, it's better that he was there because he would catch me--" Like Tony caught Jon's hold on his arm in his free hand, he was listening, he did get it, even if it didn't really look like it as he continued to talk over Jon, "No one's breaking anything, I'm invincible, I don't know if you've heard. If you have to glowy eyeball someone, it's not Cayde."

It was about this point that it was obvious they had been 'quiet' in the bathroom for far too long. Tony called out suddenly, "That was a very controlled explosion, I had it under control," with his focus still on Jon, eyebrows raised to ask if they were alright before he turned away to peek out the door. His arm remained stretched behind him in Jon's hold by the sink, fingers twitching energetically like he was still using them to illustrate as he said, "Hey! You remember, that day, when I asked you to take D.A.T.A. on patrol--...?"

He looked from side to side, then back to Jon over his shoulder to ask, "Where'd they go?"

Edited (its fine) 2021-11-17 17:46 (UTC)

Too quiet. Not like Echo had a problem with it, but this was how the outpost was whenever he wasn't in.

Footfalls eventually announced the ARC Trooper's return to the fold, rubbing the back of his neck as he sat back down. His pensive expression slipped a little, noticing the water was still running.

"...Someone better not be drowning in there."

Since Tony doesn't seem to be any of the cleaning himself, Jon has started doing so, but not without a sigh and a slow shake of his head in response to Tony trying to defend Cayde in this. If it really has been Tony's idea in the first place, it should have been Cayde to remind Tony of how bad of an idea this would be.

They both know that Tony isn't as invincible as he claims. He gives the hand a small pat before releasing it, wordlessly asking if there are other wounds that should at least get looked at.

"Caye left, hasn't he." Jon calls out of the bathroom, not necessarily appearing surprised by it.

It might not have been a surprise for Jon, but it was a concern for Tony, who raised his eyebrows inquisitively at Echo's lone reappearance. They hadn't even gotten to the whole reason they came over here yet, and Cayde left without saying anything. Out loud finally instead of in a hush, still standing in the door to the bathroom where he could see both of them, he said, "I told you something was wrong." He flicked the water from his hand and gave a small shake of his head, he was fine, his lumps were surface damage.

Concern found its way into the frown Echo wore as he met Tony's gaze, his brow still set. "You're telling me," he said with all seriousness, looking past the man to wherever Jon was within the bathroom. "And I'm sure this all could've gone differently if we all weren't doing what we've been doing."

"The departure of a friend is no free ticket to put your remaining friends at risk of physical harm." Jon points out, turning the water off and drying his own hands quickly before stepping past Tony out of the bathroom. Not, however, without casting a glance up at the other man, just letting him know that yes, he has heard what Tony has said while they were in that bathroom.

Once he finds himself standing more or less in the middle of the other two, Jon's attention is more on Echo for now and he adds with a shake of his head. "Sulking won't change that. Now, can I borrow a knife from you, Echo? I will go back upstairs and cut that rope."

As Jon moved passed him, Tony met his eye then looked to Echo again over his head with a look of exasperation and started, "He didn't do anything--" again because, as far as Tony knew, that wasn't the problem they were trying to solve, but Jon was so stubborn he was starting to doubt that.

With a deep breath, he flapped his hands, letting Echo decide if giving Jon a weapon was a good idea, and tried to refocus on what he was supposed to have been doing this whole time. With the change in energy, it didn't sound nearly as fun to try to trick Echo, so he asked more directly, "Listen, we were talking, and we came over here because Cayde said you might be able to paint. Not right now, you can go back to...what were you two doing? And don't worry about the details. We're going to make a mural, with everybody, the whole team, up on a wall downtown."

Jon asking to borrow a knife was one thing, not too out of the ordinary when they were all living under such conditions. Jon being brusque, however, deserved a look of its own. Which was probably why it took him a little more time to reply in turn. Fortunately that also delayed retrieving a knife. "...We've been exposed to harm, Jon. Risks are risks for a reason, but that doesn't stop people from taking them."

Although he didn't look at Tony when he came clean with the project he had in mind, his brow softened by a degree. "How do you think I got my stripes?" With a subtle headshake of his own, he added, "That doesn't sound like a bad idea."

"There is a difference between being exposed to risks and taking them for-" Jon starts sharply, but pauses when Tony shares the reason for this visit. "-a mural?" That's when Jon's attention drifts back to Tony and Jon just... Looks at him with a single raised brow. They threw themselves off a tall building because they want to paint a wall. Letting out a silent sigh, Jon pinches the bridge of his nose and mumbles a quiet curse to himself.

Under different circumstances, he would have agreed with and supported the idea, but combined with what the idea has led to so far, it has already put a bad taste into his mouth. He flips the hand that has just been used to pinch the bridge of his own nose up in what may be some sort of disgruntled defeat, he turns away and heads for the door. He needs a cigarette on that. Or two. Which he intends to have on his way home.

The whiplash from Echo's approval making Tony brighten considerably, to Jon's judgmental and distinctly unenthusiastic expression making his shoulders and smile immediately drop, left Tony looking drained and apologetically inquisitive at Jon's retreating back, without the energy left to argue his case. It wasn't the worst idea he ever had. It might have been a waste of time. Slowly, in his own defeat, not sure what he had done this time to have this visit fall apart so quickly, he looked back to Echo and produced a faint smirk. "Look what you did," he accused.

He did mean it. He hadn't seen any large-scale projects in a while, and he missed seeing creative designs painted and livening up the spaces he and many other clones occupied. He also said nothing more when the Archivist started and stopped himself from continuing, allowing Jon his personal space since it wouldn't have been wise to talk him into staying.

After a few beats, the clone snorted, albeit halfhearted in its intended annoyance. "Me?" Echo feigned offense, sharing the look with Tony. "If I knew I was going to have multiple visitors, I would've made some ramen."

"Oh, please," Tony trilled, puffing his chest for a delicate hand to his heart with the other raised, pinky in the air, "No need to prepare the banquet for my sake. You know I'll settle for a good vintage and a nibble of the season's caviar." As he exhaled the lofty breath, the whole performance went with it and he finally dropped bonelessly into a chair where he slouched with his legs outstretched and chin against his chest, frowning.

"Is he okay?" he asked after a moment of sulkily wiggling his fingers, trying to avoid the admission that the question demanded entirely. He let Echo decide which men that had walked out without a farewell that Tony meant, because Tony wasn't sure which one he did himself, and it seemed like Echo knew better than he did in either case.

There was a chuckle hidden somewhere in there, but Echo felt just as tired the second Tony visibly deflated. Hands then clasped together, pressing lightly against each other as he studied them, only glancing up when the vague question was posed.

"Quieter than normal." A small, sad smile briefly showed on his lips. "He stole your sunglasses."

Tony went, "Hmf," to the observation, that had been hard to miss, though harder yet to understand. And if he did, if Tony could figure out the precise axis of lost friends, the frenzy that they had all been in that lead to both guilt for their actions and a challenge to what trust they had in each other, the specific threat that Jon had levelled against Cayde, and the myriad of clumsier slips and inattentiveness that Tony was prone to, if Tony knew the angle of all of these mechanisms, if they were even what was wrong, it was not in his array of talents to fix that kind of problem. He had to draw himself up out of this fugue, belatedly refocusing on Echo to actually process what he had said then, and breathed a sardonic laugh to accuse, "And you let him? Is that how you handle problems when you're out there doing your route, just catalogue and report?"

In receiving no immediate response, Echo sat quietly as Tony went through his own thoughts. He could have sworn he saw the gears working, wondering what made the man tick the way he did. Layers of complexity made him difficult to read, but the gist of it wasn't so bad.

He wasn't too surprised when this came up, exhaling a sigh as he rolled his shoulders, unclasping his hands so that they rested on his thighs. "Sounds about right," he affirmed with a ghost of a smirk. "It's always good to have it on record. If you want, I can tell him to give them back."

The banter was close to familiar, missing what he had while thankful for the fact that it could still be done. It helped ground him, keeping him here in the outpost, letting his own thoughts return to what happened with Jon. "Has he always been like this?"

Already scratching his beard thoughtfully in a way that could not mean good things for Echo, Tony grumbled, "Jesus, no, then he'll know that they're valuable." If Cayde knew that, it would be much harder to extract the sunglasses. "You have to go in without him knowing. This is a stealth mission." They hadn't quite recovered the levity in the room for Tony to be committed to this impish impulse, though, dropping his hand again and tipping his head back in his seat so he was looking down his nose at Echo, even as he frowned with some confusion at the question.

"I'm not actually his dad," he didn't realize he had to clarify. Cayde could have decided on all new sensitivities and proclivities the day he woke up in this situation, and Tony would have no idea. Only after that was out of his mouth did he realize, with a thumb pointed toward the door where he had gone, "Jon? I don't know. Maybe. He's done that to me, but not for a while..." Not sure what that could mean, Tony only pouted then added, "He's stubborn. Was he like that before we flew in?"

His nose scrunched slightly, but he should have known it wouldn't be so simple. "You had to make it a challenge," Echo mildly complained, his heart not completely into the tone he was trying to voice as he waited for an answer.

The admission of not being Cayde's dad made the corner of his lips quirk, but he nodded once Tony figured he wasn't asking about the Exo. "He was going about business as usual. I didn't notice anything different before that..." He then tipped his head to one side, letting a pause slip in as he thought about the development. "Maybe...he's just worried about you."

That was an embarrassing enough statement for Echo to say out loud that Tony thought he might slouch even more into his seat, his shoulders already up around his ears and rocking his heels on the floor, and he briefly managed a look in Echo's direction that suggested he had been profoundly insulted by this before dropping his gaze more bashfully to the ground between them. It was only further embarrassing that the issue might just be that they were all worried about each other, and Echo and Tony were still talking about the people who didn't actually want to talk about it.

"What about you?" Tony asked with a decisive shift, then cleared his throat to push himself up properly in the chair and fold his legs more primly, returning to his trained posture with a hand in the air that looked like it should be holding a glass. "How do you feel about me, of course--you can tell me if I've been keeping you up at night, it's understandable, you wouldn't be the first person with that problem," he qualified so the question didn't sound too heavy.

The lengths Tony went to to look offended was kind of entertaining. Echo would have laughed aloud, managing to stifle a snort to preserve the honesty that went into his answer.

He shouldn't have been surprised at how fast he bounced back, his brow lifting at the way he turned his own words against him. It allowed him a chance to theatrically balk, gaze half-lidded as he said, "I'm pretty sure you already know, Tony. I tolerate you." Some sass crept into the statement, crossing his arms loosely at that. "Sorry to say you're not the one who kept me awake."

Tony accepted Echo's tolerance like it was an impassioned confession, hand to his fluttering heart, and might have kept beating his lashes at Echo if he wasn't so expertly distracted by his choice of words. Frozen in his tableau of romance but watching Echo intently, he demanded, "There's someone else?" No longer sure where the line was between Echo's love life and whatever trauma he was combating this week that neither of them really wanted to talk about directly, Tony lamented more sincerely, "And you didn't tell me?"

That would have been fine. Tony being insufferably Tony was fine, but the man was sharp. There was no way to switch to another topic when it was brought to attention -- not subtly, at least. Plus he couldn't think of anything he could distract Tony with aside from his own relationships.

There really wasn't any point in lying about it, either. The clone wore a fleeting expression akin to swearing under a breath at the revelation, squeezing his eyes shut for a few seconds to let that slip sit. "...Was," he then clarified, his voice low and eyes reopening to look elsewhere. "It was complicated, and barely figured it out at the time."

Echo's admission was so genuinely unexpected that Tony was having a hard time reading his hesitance, eyes narrowing curiously and with some suspicion that this was a new game, then going wide at the single word confirmation. He shed his own performance slowly as Echo continued, letting his shoulders drop and bracing his arms on those of the chair to tap his restless beat into his own palms, like typing as he tried to calculate the possible who and the potential timeframe that he had somehow entirely missed.

"Sorry," he eventually offered, because those details wouldn't change Echo's expression. "I'm sorry you didn't have enough time." Tony was already bad at this kind of thing, and he had already tried the 'they could come back' angle with Cayde earlier and it was not satisfying. After carefully swallowing, he said instead, "Gotta get that painting started, huh? Lots of pictures of everybody, from before, around. Hope you're up for it. Big project. Reeve can draw, too, I've seen them, really lovely stuff, and--I know Steve will paint, though--I mean, he must like it. People to help. Do you want to...talk about it?" All at once, like he could slip that in there secretly. He hadn't exactly responded well when Jon disappeared, he probably could have used someone to talk to.

Sustaining that kind of subtlety usually took little effort; Echo would have enjoyed watching Tony's commitment to analyzing and deciphering the visual and non-visual cues he gave off, all of which fell short after the events that unfolded, leaving him with the dregs of feelings he didn't need bubbling up to the surface. Having to sort through them wasn't part of the day's plans, but he couldn't outright ignore their rawness. And it wasn't really Tony's fault for stumbling across them the way he did.

The apology was met with a slow blink -- a delayed reaction, one that realized that he was truly sorry about the circumstances, the slightest movement of his head tilting so he could look at Tony when he forged on with the impending painting project. "Yeah," he mustered a faint smile, "I'd like to see what everyone comes up with."

No, he didn't miss that question. The flow worked well, but it still stood out amid the distraction. His fingers curled into his palm, their hold relaxing after a short pause. "I don't...think there's much to tell," the clone said with a mirthless chuff. "Aside from it being unexpected."

Burden

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