revivalproject | Trimming

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Trimming

WHO: Everyone! It's a mingle, get into it, bring your own winter traditions
WHERE: The diner
WHAT: A little winter celebration
WHEN: The solstice/end of the year
WARNINGS: Mark it if you get weird. I assume we're all a little busy, so if you want to use this to handwave some cordial introductions or a quick lore dump from Tony, just let me know.

There wasn't any official invitation or forewarning. In fact, Tony hadn't exactly planned to spend his day like this. Arriving at the diner, though, it would be difficult to ignore the acrid smell of burning, or the waft of coffee trying vainly to cover it. The scorched scent could have come from the brazier crackling outside of the diner door, spreading a ring of warmth that left a patch of the walkway cleared of snow, though the effect of that fire was more cozy, inviting anyone in the square near the fountain closer, with a sweet, woody smoke and an extra sharp, green scent from the lurid red and weirdly purple, piney boughs hung around the doorway. The burnt smell was stronger inside, anyway, clearly from a mishap in the kitchen, with another stack of those prickly branches on the diner counter not doing a convincing job of covering a black mark scorched into the surface. The rest of the room might have been distracting enough, though; red, white and pink glitter was dusted throughout the space, spreading from where it had been intended to be contained in clusters of flowers on tables, and colourful glass was hung from the ceiling in icicles or gathered into balls that all winked in the flicker of warm light. Where there weren't lumpy, grey-ish candles, hurriedly disguised with more glitter or brass bowls, there were small, woody shells like chestnuts dotted around the room, filled to teetering brim with a viscous sap that gave off a yellowish glow and left the whole diner shimmering.

Nestled in doorframes and above the counter where a spread of food that might be alluring to the particularly brave, were more lovingly crafted decorations: clusters of small, gold leaves in bouquets tied with red ribbons that chimed softly like bells if someone stood underneath them. The food on display did not give a great hint of what the disaster might have been. Rather, it was difficult to discern which dish would be the main culprit. There was a large bowl of a creamy, yellow liquid, with suspicious lumps and blackened flecks floating in it, with a stack of mismatched cups next to it for serving. The coffee pot next to it was probably safer. The foods that weren't cooked, per se, but sliced and piled onto plates were likely innocent, too, though it was entirely possible that some of those fruits should have been cooked to be edible. A tray of what kind of looked like pancakes looked trustworthy enough, assuming the worst of them didn't make it to the serving stage. In general, the decorations were clearly handled more competently.

The days had been dark and cold, and the diner was warm, bright, and ready to leave everyone full of dubiously edible cheer. If you stayed long enough, maybe Tony would even offer you one of those strange bundles he was fastidiously working on at a table, where an occasional crack sent a puff of smoke swirling up among the gently tinkling glass ornaments.

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Hey, if that eye rolling result had happened, TOmmy would have been impressed. Seriously impressed.

"I didn't say I know what day it is. Vision kept track of that for me, and I guess I mark up walls, but I don't know the calendar as well as my boyfriend does."

Dude, Tommy isn't like this for anyone else because it doesn't smell like char in his diner. Which Tony should know. SO yes, he's rolling his eyes at that one and not engaging. Instead he's sliding into a seat to consider Tony's project.

"I thought those are just paper things that pull apart. Why is it sparking?"

"Then how do you know tomorrow isn't Valentines Day?" Tony interrupted, but by the time they were both done he was closing his eyes again and doing his best to vent out his frustration with a huff because Tommy was not going to trap him in one of these circular arguments. Not on Christmas.

He eased his hold around his project as Tommy joined him, spreading some papers and the jangling prizes that he was stuffing inside so maybe Tommy could answer his own question, because Tony was feeling slightly baffled by it. "Because they're crackers," he thought was a reasonable enough explanation. It was in the name. When the recognition wasn't coming quickly enough, he demonstrated with a half knit together one, bending the paper package instead of ripping it so he could strike his igniting strips with the demonstrable crack and leave a dark singe behind on the wrapping paper where a fire rapidly burnt out. "That's the best part."

That earned an eye roll from Tommy.

"Winter just started, Tony. No way it's Valentine's Day."

Clearly his logic is flawless. Still he doesn't feel like Tony's logic on the crackers is anything but flawless. In fact, he now looks very annoyed.

"Stupid Earth not putting the spark into the crackers. This should happen more. How stupid."

No amount of venting would lend Tony the patience to suffer Tommy's goading, not with him ignoring the fight that Tony had tried to pick, and without anyone else around here to butt heads with him. Jon had been downright amenable lately, really, this was his fault. "Are you trying to piss me off?" Tony accused first, hands out in disbelief that Tommy was not following him on this calendar thing. He was smarter than that. "'Winter' doesn't mean anything in this conversation. At the very least, we could be in the Australia of Agra-10, and in New York right now the cherry blossoms are just coming in. I could decide that the next three days were my birthday, and the only sound evidence anyone had against that would be that it couldn't be all three." Meanwhile, with much sharper movements than were necessary, Tony snatched the vessel with the gunpowder from his pile to tamp down in between them on the table, then rifled through the materials until he found some untouched strips and the coloured powder from the beach powder. With just as much argumentative force, he declared, "That'll make it green."

"Vision did the math and figures out when our birthday was," Tommy answered. So really, he was going to take the answer that implied to him that his dad was right. Sorry, Tony. There's LITERALLY no logic to his decision here. Zero evidence, zero rationale, just trusting his father.

But his eyes go wider at the other statement. He's lost the talk about the date because no way, Tony knows how to do that?

"Just the powder? That's enough? Dude, if you can make something that makes green explosions, how much do I have to bribe you for some of it? Can it have smoke? Can I make ninja smoke bombs and disappear?"

The Vision that Tommy knew was before Tony's time here, and since then Tommy had even left and had years worth of life lived before returning, and he still seemed unreasonably sure that he was keeping accurate count and that their temporal displacement was moot. This was incredible enough that Tony narrowed his eyes, looking once again sure that Tommy was doing this expressly to irritate him. "And since then, despite the weirdly long days, despite the trips off of the planet, despite being knocked out and stuck in a tunnel, despite the shared hallucination that took god knows how long, despite you and your literal twin being different ages, you're still sure you know what day it is on Earth," he summarized for them both.

Despite looking like he might melt Tommy for scrap, Tony spread the paper strips out again; right now, no bribing necessary, just put it together, they had a job to do here. "I'll take a hot tub and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. Or a nice bed," he still was very willing to accept a bribe for no effort on his part. "Real nice, not nice-for-an-apocalypse. Firm pillows. High thread count."

"Man, I'm doing my best to keep time moving," Tommy said at last, his voice a bit... sad. "I believe in him, and I want to believe in him. I haven't had a lot of good guys in my life that I could look up to, okay? Vision back home puts Viv first, and Billy next. And shit, Pietro isn't a role model."

And then he looks at Tony.

"You aren't always either. Even if you trusted me, kept Maria Hill from shooting me that one time."

Or will. And Tommy keeps insisting that he's from Tony's future, that won't change.

"... You know I'm going to have to ask the Agrii for that."

They were talking about very different things, because Tony was not under any impression that the matter of the calendar had anything to do with believing that Vision could count and how admirable that was in a paternal figure. It certainly didn't necessitate the collateral damage that he or Pietro took. While this insistence did illuminate why Tommy was being so resistance, Tony didn't see any reason yet to concede.

It didn't surprise him in the least that Director Hill would be taking shots at Tommy, Tony was already laying the groundwork to shield the kids from her itching trigger finger, so he only frowned at the accusation that he could be considered a role model. "Never have been, sweetheart," he corrected quickly, breezing through to continue, "But I do know that if I came from the middle of 2014, and you came from, whatever, the winter of 2020, then there is no way that we're lining up a calendar to whatever Earth has going on right now. What about Cap, what's wrong with him?" There was no way for Tony to attempt to defend this Vision that Tommy described, despite being fairly confident that these faults were largely in Tommy's head; Tony's Vision adored his babies when he had them, and died before anyone could accuse him of favouritism. For all Tony knew, Tommy's Pietro was similarly alien. Captain America, though, wasn't anything if he wasn't a role model.

Oh exceedingly difficult things. Ones that made Tommy shake his head because the whole conversation was so... frustrating at this point. How was he supposed to get Tony to understand? And should he even try?

"Cap it condescending," Tommy answered with a shrug. "I mean, he stood up for us when the whole thing with the Registration Act came up, but he was still, like, actively hindering my team in a lot of ways, before and after I got there."

Tony had called Cap condescending himself too many times to argue that point, but that was a bit of a harsh declaration to make when the point was, "That doesn't make him a bad role model." No wonder Tommy didn't have the patience for Vizh or Pietro if the bar was so high. "You gotta figure out how to forgive people their personal shit, son, all of that is going to rot through your foundations."

The bar wasn't HIGH, Tony. The bar included 'be there for your family' and 'don't be an asshole'. Why was that high?

"I've forgiven you," Tommy countered.

Tony reacted to this revelation like it was an attack, recoiling slightly to take in more of Tommy with his frown. That was a bold statement to make, Tony had a lot of personal shit to forgive that he couldn't begin to guess which one Tommy held against him, far more than anyone else they were talking about. Well. Maybe not Pietro. He did make it particularly unrewarding to try. "So Cap and Vizh and whoever else should be easy. You've climbed Everest and are complaining about a flight of stairs. You've picked a job where you spend more than enough time fighting weirdos in tights, don't hold grudges against the ones that have your back."

"Yeah, well shit isn't always easy. Those stairs are icy. You've sorta helped me here, plus you didn't let Maria Hill shoot me, so that's bonus."

He had been trusted with the armor. He was kinda sorta being taught. And Tony wasn't as tolerant of Tommy calling himself stupid. He's won some important victories.

"They don't always have my back."

Being 'sorta' helpful and not letting Tommy get shot did not sound like the same hurdle to clear that he was setting for everybody else, and Tony pursed his lips with a sigh, trying to pin down this elusive equation. "They do, though," he insisted, fully confident that any Avenger would drag Tommy out of a burning building. That was kind of their whole thing. "Maybe not every time you want them to, but when it matters." Tommy had his own example right there, and Tony opened his hands on the table to finally accept it, "I gave Hill that gun, didn't I? I put you in that situation?" Just a guess, but Tony had plenty of the pieces of that puzzle by now to assure him that his vision of the future was not going to stop it from crushing them. "Still had your back."

"Dude, I literally have no clue whether you did or not. Likely she already had it. She IS Shield. But I was there to get you your suit. Because Asgard was falling."

And Tony, even knowing everything that was going on, how people would react to him, even hurt as he was... He had chosen to help. And he'd protected Tommy.

"And if it wasn't for some assholes giving Osborn his own Avengers it wouldn't have happened."

Tommy made it difficult to tell if he understood that 'the gun' in Tony's situation was a metaphor for the reason or the means, not literally what S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued weapon Hill was pointing at him, making Tony narrow his eyes dubiously and ready to make sure they were talking about the same thing still until Tommy made it very clear that he knew what a metaphor was. Asgard couldn't literally fall out of the sky. Could it? And he was still recovering from that when he was presented with the equally unwieldy concept of giving [anyone] their OWN Avengers, let alone forced to place exactly who Tommy meant by 'Osborn'. Tony's first wild swing was some other S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, a handler like Gyrich, and this suggested parcelling of Avenger teams their neatest solution for managing the incoming superhero panic bill.

Right?

Tony could feel the wrinkled forming from squinting at Tommy and had to consciously relax to accuse, "You say the most unbelievable shit, sweetheart, I feel like I'm being attacked." And with Tommy clearly blaming whatever this monumental occasion was on someone that wasn't Tony, Tony did not have a clear path back to what he was trying to tell him. Instead, he tried, "We both should work on that."

Of course he didn't understand what Tony meant. Tommy and metaphors didn't really get on well.

"We were all attacked by Osborn. His stupid fucking Dark Avengers and Dark X-Men and Dark every-fucking-thing. He even sorta facilitated a team of evil teens that were elbowing in on the Young Avengers. Tried to force their way onto our team, and dude, they were fucked up. And that's coming from me."

But he'd seen Lisa again, and that was something.

"We live in an unbelievable world, where unbelievable shit happens. I'm literally retroreincarnated, that's fucked up. The world is just like that."

That did sound like a terrible empire of misguided heroics (why were they dark?), more of a power grab for someone to be in charge of these groups, so Tony quickly went from a nose wrinkled in irritation at the concept to a pout of concern for the 'evil teens'. "That sounds like you could have helped them," he said hopefully, though it did not sound like Tommy or the rest of the Young Avengers were open to that kind of thing. The basic tenets of the Avengers in general took a very thorough beating in that short explanation.

They were called that in retrospect. TO differentiate them.

"We tried, but fuck. They didn't really want that. Not much you could do when they were trying to basically fuck you up and replace you."

Not that it was going to change anything for those particular kids now, but Tommy's attitude about it made Tony frown and try to think back on how often he otherwise gave Tony a shrug of 'not much you can do'. Too many times since he joined Tony at the table alone. Maybe that did work for him, and maybe it was healthier than going to Tony's extremes. Still, Tony pointed out, "Your mom was just a kid in a bad situation when she met the Avengers. So were you." He raised his eyebrows, asking if it was possible for Tommy to extend the same sympathy.

"I was literally in prison," Tommy answered with a shrug. Which was where Wanda no doubt would have been, given the chance of the X-Men. Hell, there were still people that would want her in such a position.

"Exactly," Tony replied, not sure again if that meant Tommy actually understood what he meant, or just literally, ignoring the context again, and furrowed his brow inquisitively. "Plenty of people had already written you off. Did you deserve that?"

That's a loaded question, Tony, a very loaded one. Tommy took a moment to consider it carefully, form many different angles. So his response was actually one that wouldn't satisfy him, but would be accurate.

"According to a jury of people who were in no way shape or form actually my peers, yes."

"Yeah, that would be part of the group that had written you off," Tony agreed, snapping his fingers with a shake of his head. He shouldn't have need to tell a speedster to keep up. "All of that qualifying sounds like you don't agree, so you tell me what's so different about these 'dark' kids. Is your territory being threatened?"

Well, that was simple in Tommy's book. Really simple.

"Murder," Tommy answered. "They killed people. Intentionally. Willingly. Sometimes because they were bad people. Except I think people are should get second chances, even the bad ones. These kids, we tried to give them a second chance. And if we weren't there..."

He had voted for them, until he'd learned more. Then he'd just wanted to take Lisa away from them.

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and if i have the wrong event poke me over discord to fix

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