revivalproject | Hazy Shade of Winter

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Hazy Shade of Winter

WHO: Lord Felwinter and others
WHERE: Around Temba
WHAT: The warlord keeps busy.
WHEN: Mid to late January
WARNINGS: TBA
NOTES: Will match pose format

The Forge (for Tony)
It was not without some resignation that the warlord made his way towards the edge of the city where the man Tony Stark had laid claim to the local forge. But with such a specific need, one could not be picky, and the man did decent work so far as he could tell. The snowmen out front were however another story.

The trio of shapes seemed haphazardly packed together from the pink snow, heads listing to the side, barely balanced but somehow still remaining in their places. Twigs, rocks and leaves made up the barest of details. Felwinter regarded these strange snow beings that stood sentry not far from the mostly hidden path winding off towards Tony's domain, his Ghost giving a shrug as she floated beside him.

They continued onwards, listening for the telltale sounds that would verify whether Tony was present and at work or not, although Felspring would be able to detect any presences soon enough.

Security Station (Open)
Given how rare it appeared anyone else ventured to the station and its adjacent tower, the snow coating the road out front was hardly traversed, and depending on the most recent snowfall, bore perhaps only one set of fresh tracks.

It wasn't as though the warlord made it well-known where he had chosen to shelter, but he did not expect to receive any guests either- not that it was an easy feat considering the elevator to the topmost floor where he dwelled was non-functional. Despite Wanda's suggestions, he had only gone so far as to fix up one of the offices just below as a more privately enclosed space to rest, although he still hadn't bothered with a bed. He felt better with a wall at his back.

One might catch him coming or going from the station, usually early or later in the day.

Diner (Open)
This wasn't a place Felwinter tended to frequent. It however seemed an ideal place as any to stockpile firewood should anyone need it, and since he was unfamiliar with the methods of how people cooked here, he might also think that they were restricted to cookfires as those back home. There was a neat stack of wood set up just outside the door, and some stacked within against a wall where it wouldn't be in anyone's way.

If one didn't come across the warlord as he carried a fresh load on his back as he returned from the woods, then they might find him piling the logs outside or within.

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It shouldn't have felt worse to have the helmet off, but Tony was already on edge, and that layer of armor between them would have been reassuring as long as he wasn't in the Iron Man himself and his glasses were still AWOL. He drifted closer with a grimace that wasn't pretending very well to be a smile, flicking his free hand up in a loose greeting that was abandoned before it reached its peak, gold gloves remaining distinctly in place. "Oh, well--that's. A shame," he muttered for losing his trade, frowning down at the weapon when he got within arms reach, and still keeping his distance from Felwinter despite his curious lean that left him looking like the stick he still dragged was grounding him. His next grimace wasn't pretending to be anything else, openly unenthusiastic about the ammunition part of the request, but that would have to wait as the expression was frozen in place and Felwinter continued, only his eyebrows raising in dismay. Of course he was acting guilty, he was always guilty, and he had definitely done something to piss Felwinter off. He just thought Felwinter must have known what that was better than he did.

Rapidly, he schooled the expression into an insulted frown, hand back on his chest in a dainty spread of his fingers this time. "You're the one that pointed a gun at me, how else am I supposed to take that?" he pointed out. "Don't put that on me, sweetheart, I'm gonna get jumpy if you invite yourself in and start pulling triggers."

The man had been a strange one, but he had not outright intended harm in the manner that Kaz had. It probably didn't help that he kept watching Tony, but that was more out of habit than actually directed distrust, and with him now knowing that Tony could make armor appear and fly at unspoken command he felt he had even more reason to be on his guard.

"I stated that I had business up front," Felwinter said, but he finally let his eyes drop away from Tony, some of the tension from his bony shoulders ebbing away with almost a sense of sheepishness. "I- am sorry," he amended, an awkward apology spoken as one unused to them. "I am used to being direct, and deal proposals not ending peaceably." It was how he'd acquired his mountain keep when the previous warlord refused him. Of course, it ended with him tossing said warlord off the mountain.

Business felt very much like the business of filling Tony with bullets right up until Felwinter admitted he didn't have any ammo, so Tony scoffed at this backpeddling, hand raised to stop Felwinter from trying any harder before he hurt himself. That gesture drifted down listlessly at the stilted apology, not nearly the combative energy that Tony expected to sustain it, and making Felwinter sound more like the robot that Kaz accused him of being than the threat he had swept in here as.

After a beat and a quick breath, Tony still tried to salvage what fight was left to avoid lingering too long on that exposed wire, insisting, "And how did you expect 'hey, can you fix my gun' to go so badly? You think I'm going to say no? Okay, well, I am kind of saying 'no', so you're right, this is the worst possible outcome for you, but only to the bullets. I'll take care of your baby, but you've got to feed her yourself."

Felspring drifted over to reclaim her place by Felwinter almost defensively, but she refrained from saying anything. Both she and the warlord knew Tony made a good point, and civility was something she knew her Risen was still working on.

Felwinter said nothing although he gradually lifted his gaze from the fringes of the glittery mess that Tony had tracked over to the workbench's area, meeting Tony's eye with just the slightest furrow of his metal brow. He nodded. That was fair enough. Why should a man provide ammunition if he was afraid it were to be used against him?

"Very well," he confirmed before prompting, "And payment for the repair?" He gestured with his free hand towards the entrance to the forge. "My initial offer still stands for your proposed consultation fee."

As long as Felwinter thought this was a perfectly reasonable limit and not Tony convincing himself that it was fine to work on weapons as long as he didn't actually arm them to satisfy his own curiosity, Tony was not going to dissuade either of them of that fantasy. Plus, he was very charming when he overcame his discomfort enough to remind Tony that his gaze was incredibly disquieting, and maybe that was something that Tony should have been working through with a professional, but for now he welcomed it with a wry grin and his chin suddenly up to risk giving Felwinter an encouraging pat to the shoulder. That brought him closer to the gun, which he eagerly plucked up to test the weight himself, abandoning his defensive stick finally against the workbench.

"Trust me, you can't actually afford me, this one'll be pro bono," he corrected, focus on the shotgun with only a beat of consideration before he was rapidly disassembling it. "But I could use a door, sure, pay it forward. Do you know how to use a screwdriver?"

The Exo tensed under that hand, his optics shifting from the man who was encroaching his personal space to the shotgun. He managed to quell the urge to grab it back. Tony was going to repair it. Getting clingy about a shotgun would just set them back a step.

Of course with the man suddenly diving right into disassembly, Felwinter was very close to doing so again. His glove creaked softly as he clenched a fist, anxiety hopefully not mistaken for anger. He turned his head towards the open entryway.

"It looks like you would need more than a screwdriver for that," he noted.

The shift in Felwinter's tension very much read like anger to Tony, who was coming to assume that this was his baseline and he just held it quietly. Tony watched out of the corner of his eye, feeling the parts more than studying them as they were spread across the table, trying to track Felwinter's triggers as much as the shotgun's. Touching him certainly hadn't helped.

Abruptly abandoning his disassembly, leaving what he held on the bench, Tony spun back around to answer with a very unnecessary and delicate spread of his fingertips on both hands alighting on Felwinter's chest, "We must start somewhere, your lordship." Maybe actually being shot would have been healthier for Tony's impulses. "I haven't finished putting the door together yet. Don't worry, the programming is done, all it needs is some brute force."

Reasons were quite simpler than that. Felwinter just wasn't used to touchy people. He wasn't used to people being anything more than cautious around him if not outright threatening. There was no real experience to draw upon from his current life, ironic considering that he had originally been built with the intent of interacting with and learning about human culture.

He was unsure whether Tony was mocking him with the title but he tried not to appear like he was glaring at him- difficult to do when you had such particular features. A nod. He could help with further assembly, certainly. "It's a very complex door. Do you expect many security breaches?" Wanting to have a secure place to dwell was something he completely understood.

Tony definitely was mocking him and his very important chair, so it was difficult not to read his expression as a glare. Without any other reaction to getting into his space, though, Tony had to narrow his eyes, calculating, chagrined all over again that he seemed to obviously irritate Felwinter, just not enough to provoke him. It was testing plausible deniability when he pushed further, draping an arm around Felwinter's shoulder to turn them both toward the disassembled door for consideration. "It hasn't really been a problem, honestly, until recently--you'll never believe this--this guy just walked in and pointed a gun at me," he reported. He pursed his lips and raised his free hand in disbelief, the nerve of some people, only to flap the whole taunt away and explain more evenly, "I'm not used to anyone being in my shop, you know, back home, and being all the way out here when the three other people who lived on the planet were all downtown, that pretty much took care of that problem, it didn't even really feel like mine, listen, its--a big oven, who cares, but then--now..." His fingers slowly folded into a fist, only to bloom and give Felwinter another pat to the chest for being such a good statistic, "People keep showing up."

It wasn't as good a chair as the one back home, but he supposed it was a little more comfortable. It was also staying up in the security tower as it had been a pain getting it up there.

Again the human was hanging about him like they were buddies or something, although the effect was not unlike leaning against a statue for how little he budged. Felwinter turned his head to eye Tony again even as the other related the earlier incident as though it hadn't only happened a few minutes ago. He considered the outline of events, exaggerated, he figured, as seemed to be a trend of how the man spoke of things.

Ah, so he was being made an example.

"Your reputation precedes you. You manufacture things and do not honestly expect people to seek you out for your skills?"

Despite Felwinter's immobility, Tony was not deterred, very familiar with being a similar buzzing presence around comparably statuesque Avengers that occasionally learned to tolerate it if he was lucky. He was also not any more convinced that this lack of any kind of reaction meant that Felwinter was building up this tolerance, so he raised his eyebrows and braced himself with the shield of his smirk, ready to bask in whatever infamous reputation Felwinter would accuse him of. That all Felwinter accused him of was making things left him feeling slightly overdressed, well armored for a fight that wasn't happening.

"Ah--," he had to reorient, considering the door then the far flung evidence of his manic crafting that he clearly couldn't start denying to try to run the fight routine anyway. "No--well, sure, but you could call. I'm used to having an assistant. I don't usually have to talk to people, I spend a lot of money to explicitly not have to do that, this place is like the world ended or something."

"I am used to dealing directly with people," Felwinter said, even as he took a step away to try and reassert some of his own space from the man. "It was not very often. I suppose when you live on a mountain peak, people get the message. If you do not want to talk to people then perhaps you should find somewhere less accessible."

All he'd wanted was to be left alone, and they'd finally found that. But there were people at the foot of his mountain, people he'd learned he could relate to, and whom he could possibly help. That had Complicated things.

"Next time, if you prefer, I shall call, then," he continued, looking down at the glitter on the floor again, perhaps still waiting for some explanation about that.

Nothing Felwinter had said so far sounded so much like a blatant lie that Tony let him take his space back quite willingly, to give Tony the necessary room to turn an incredulous pout on him. Oh, he meant the means of communication--it was the 'directly' that he was used to, not the 'people', and the mountain peak context really could not have phased Tony any less. "Yeah, I mean, that's why I'm all the way out here," he muttered, see, they had so much in common, not sure if Felwinter was disparaging him for settling for the outskirts of town instead of a whole mountain between him and the rest of the community. Felwinter hadn't found a whole mountain himself, that didn't seem fair. Even if Tony hadn't even decided where the forge was placed, just took the resources that were available. "Did you want to move in or something? You'd fit right in, honestly, but I gotta warn you, I keep odd hours, and there's only one bathroom, and this takes a lot of body work," he tried with a flourish from his chin to his toes, trying to figure out what Felwinter was doing among the community now. Plenty of space for him to retreat to.

That was fair. The forge was a distance out from where others were. But it was still easily accessible by Felwinter's standards.

"No, the lack of a door is a great downside," he said. An attempt at a joke? While still being perfectly truthful. "And I have a place already." Much more practical when it came to wanting to deter uninvited guests, considering that the elevator up to the observation tower was broken.

Turning, he regarded the minefield of glitter before deciding he wasn't going to attempt dancing through it like Tony had, once again blinking from one side to the other. Felspring drifted after him, if only to join him in closer study of the dismantled door on the floor.

...was it a joke? So caught up in trying to discern if he was laughing with or at Felwinter, Tony forgot to laugh at all, then was flinching with a hand jumping up to his chest and eyes closed like he might faint at the sudden jump again. He was not getting used to it. After Felspring came Tony, carefully navigating through his mess, instructing as he did like his pointing from a distance could possibly make any sense, "That goes there, and that goes there, so you can put that there." There were tools scattered around the prone door, and some heavy, steel pieces that did look like they would fit into the puzzle of it to cover the wiring inside, and Tony's final gesture was with both arms toward the wind whistling through the doorway and the heavy cradle framing it that the door would complete. How he got this first part of the project erected, and what his plan was to lift the weight of the fully assembled door, was unclear.

Felwinter set his helmet to the side, watching as Felspring scanned the parts while he considered Tony's vague explanations. He stroked his chin and then picked up one of the pieces that he figured was the first of the that's, carefully setting it into position. A look was cast towards Tony just to double-check that it was the correct place for it before he would set to work in securing it. Thrones and lofty titles aside, it didn't seem like he had any qualms about getting right into doing work.

"Is this a sort of automated security lock?" he asked, curious.

With a nod of confidence, Tony joined Felwinter by the door, squatting on his heels with his elbows balanced on his knees like he would help knit these final pieces together. Only, instead of reaching for any part of the mess he crouched in, he waved his hands and answered dismissively, "It should keep the draft out," then seemed to entirely be there just to watch Felwinter intently, studying how he moved while he was trying to focus on something unfamiliar. This much was probably obvious, but it was still very abrupt when he suddenly asked, "Why don't you have a horn?"

He was somehow unsurprised that Tony had opted to watch him rather than offer a hand. There were a few times where those optics, like burning embers, flicked over in the man's direction. Felwinter wasn't sure he liked being studied. Felspring certainly didn't like it, watching Tony watching the warlord while she drifted above.

Slotting in another piece, Felwinter paused and turned his head to look at Tony almost in confusion. The question came out of nowhere, after all. "Why should I?" he countered. With only one other Exo in town to compare to, it wasn't too hard to see where the assumption might have been taken from.

"Exos don't all look alike," he said after a moment, returning his focus to the door.

In all fairness, that was a step closer to the question that was truly troubling Tony, which he had to cobble together from the pieces between them while trying to give a gesture of apology for not being terribly sensitive to Exo-based prejudices. He did only have the one Exo friend, he was working on it. "Why does he have a horn?" he reconstructed, thumb pointing vaguely back toward the city. The design had yet to reveal any functionality to Tony, and while it echoed the aesthetic of the Ghosts he had met thus far, there was no way yet for Tony to know if that was just coincidental. So, maybe it was a good time to glance up at Felspring, then flick a finger up to add on, "Why do they?"

Again those optics fixated upon Tony, metal brow furrowing slightly in a way that was probably meant to be confusion.

Felspring seemed glad enough to be included in the conversation, offering a shrug of her shell. "Personal tastes? Why does it matter?" At least it seemed to reassure Felwinter that it wasn't a question that he should be expected to know the answer to.

"Not something I've ever thought to ask what few Exos we've ever come across in our travels," he said. "I imagine it is like asking why you wear a beard."

It was a little more like asking why hair grew out of his face, so Tony frowned thoughtfully, clearly unsatisfied with this answer, and only a little distracted by the suggestion that Felwinter maybe only had one Exo friend, too. To Felspring, he answered, "I guess it doesn't matter, but it's not there for no reason, and I don't want to find out that the reason is to blow up at a certain altitude right before we hit that height. I have a beard because I'm a mammal and it's supposed to--help me do mammal things, I just happen to style it this way because I look incredibly good and it makes you outrageously attracted to me. Don't worry, that's normal. You guys, you're a step further, someone consciously put that there on him, and not for you, and I have to assume there's a reason for that." Which probably had something to do with what they were for in the first place, so Tony narrowed his eyes and guessed, "He's the devastating headbutt model. You...do something else."

"I do not need a lecture on the differences between organic beings and mechanical ones, Tony Stark," Felwinter said dryly. "You have a beard because you for whatever reason decided that it suited you. Just as a human will wear their hair long or short, or dress in some way or another." He regarded the door again. "I cannot speak for other Exos. I do not know if their modifications are from one life or another."

"I'm surprised you didn't just ask the Hunter," Felspring said, drifting a little lower to look over Felwinter's shoulder at the door progress. "I have a question- why red and gold?"

It wasn't supposed to be a lecture, and nor was it supposed to be about differences but similarities, so Tony frowned his frustration at this rejection and stretched back up to his feet impatiently as Felwinter pressed the point that Tony had been trying to drive him out of. "He doesn't like to talk about it," he grumbled back at Felspring, though he was starting to think it would be a much less annoying conversation even with Cayde trying to push him off.

The question took him by surprise, making him raise his eyebrows and touch a hand to his chest like he had to make sure it was him that Felspring was asking. He supposed it made sense, if the conversation the couple were assuming they were having was about aesthetics, but a) they weren't talking about him and b) no one had ever really asked that. Something about his strangely tepid reputation here that Felwinter mentioned, much less armor of uncharitable assumptions between him and anyone wondering about his motivations, might have made it more necessary. "Makes me go faster," he dismissed at first, dropping his hand with a wave then onto his hip like that was the only and most obvious answer. After a beat he seemed to reconsider, fingers of his free hand slowly fanning and curling his discomfort and gaze darting as he admitted, "The gold was a girlfriend--fiancee, at the time. Said the grey was scary." He tilted his head, glancing back to Felwinter then--maybe he understood that feeling. "Scared kids. Said I should be a golden knight to match my--..." He huffed, fist clenched tight then, clearly done with sharing. "It's not so easy here--or, it wasn't, before they put that glitter fountain in the new ship. Really livens the place up. Don't know why some people don't like it."

Felwinter honestly had no answers to give Tony in the previous vein, and it was only becoming frustrating with the man seeming to think that there were. It wasn't a thing anyone asked before. Was it because Exos were just known, back home? Already accepted as people that they all were?

This turn of thought did make him pause again. How much did Stark figure out about him? Or was it a simple puzzle click once Kaz had spoken so indifferently of?

Felspring meanwhile leveled a look at Tony's first response to her question, waiting, and perhaps even surprised when he did actually turn out an actual answer. Even she flicked a look towards Felwinter as Tony did, the Exo lifting his head slightly before turning it towards Tony. Kids were not something he was very acquainted with. That wasn't the point he focused on as the man lapsed in his explanation, and for a good moment or two even after Tony deflected to talk of glitter fountains, both Fels regarded him in silence.

Finally Felwinter picked up where he'd left off with the remaining pieces of the door. "Is that what that is? Livening the place up?" he said with the slightest up-tip of his head in the direction of the glittering mess on the floor.

That was an incredibly awkward pause, making Tony's jaw clench as he tried very hard not to fill the silence with further embarrassing sharing because whatever was on the tip of his tongue could not be trusted. His shoulders dropped with some relief as Felwinter turned back to their project, and he looked around at the indicated mess with some surprise, like he still didn't think it was noticeable enough to remark on. There was more interesting stuff on the floor in the mess of the forge. He was happy to report, though, "Oh, definitely," sweeping over to pluck up one of the balls that so far had been there to trip on and help break a tailbone or two. It was colourful and highly polished, and clearly heavy as Tony gave it a toss and it slapped back down into his hand. "It's for the Hunter," he teased Felspring. "Said he would really get a kick out of me hustling him at pool, and I'm always open to helping people indulge in their pleasures." Okay, Cayde might not have said that exactly, but the Deep End could use one more reason to get fiery over a dirty bet. Tony might even be able to spend some time there now, maybe, as long as the sun was still up.

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