[Video]

[out_of_order]

[Cal's leaning against a wall nearly overtaken by clinging vines. He sighs a little before giving a headshake and a sad smile directed off-screen.]

Guess not, buddy.

[He looks back at the screen, rolling back his shoulders as he takes a deep breath, trying to summon a more convincing smile.]

Well, things sure got a lot more...greener around the city. Didn't think we were gone that long, but alien planets, right?

Been easing back into things and I'm sure everyone else has been doing the same, but if anyone needs anything repaired or might want to have a look at salvage parts I've got, just let me know so I can be at the workshop.

Also, if you need some doors or paths cleared, I can probably help with that too.

Guess that's it.

[The Jedi shrugs, offering a nod before he clicks off.]

Comments

[out_of_order]

Equating things to a funeral made Cal grimace, but he supposed he'd started them on that sort of a mood. He breathed out a laugh as he ran a hand over his face.

"That's... not really what I'd thought about but...I can see what you're getting at. And yeah, we had funerals." He shook his head. "I guess that's the thing we have to focus on, right? Hope for the best, and just...just remember the time we had while we were all here, while we can."

[in_extremis]

Tony mirrored the grimace in apology, and weighed his hand side to side, admitting that it might not have been the perfect analogy. "Retirement party," he suggested, though it didn't feel like it could really be walked back now, and retirement didn't exactly have the same finality. Clint was always retiring from the Avengers. The only time he didn't come back was when he died. "Graduation?" Now Tony was looking a little desperate for Cal to save him with how he had been framing it.

[out_of_order]

Retirements and graduations were a bit more foreign than funerals, the former two ideas more understood from the time he'd been an intern at a newspaper company in a made-up world. Cal gave Tony a pained smile as he wasn't really sure how to rescue him from the hole he'd been digging himself into.

He looked to try and offer something, raising an upturned hand as though he could grasp a word from out of the air, but apparently he wasn't having any luck of finding anything. His mouth opened then dropped a sigh as he shook his head again, letting his hand fall.

"I think we're kind of drifting," he finally said with a weak chuckle. "Maybe the first one was closer after all."

[in_extremis]

Ritualizing it probably wasn't the solution if they were both struggling to frame it so much, and Tony gave a noncommittal nod, waving his hand again with the other hooked around the back of his neck. "Life continues," he decided to agree. "And, hey, listen, you've got your gal, you've got to have plans, that's what you still have control over," he enthused, only to lose energy as he spoke because it did sound a lot like the kind of thing that hurt Lauri-Ell so much. "If you're into that kind of thing," he tried to temper.

[out_of_order]

"I don't know... Heh, it's kind of sad to think about. I haven't really made much plans past surviving before I got off Bracca, and now... I guess I've just been playing things by ear," Cal admitted, shaking his head with a brief, rueful smile. "Planning around here seems...trickier to do too." Never knew when the world would warp or the sky would fall, or you'd be shipped off planet among other things.

He looked at Tony. "Do you have plans?"

[in_extremis]

That was hard to argue with, when the next thing Tony knew he could be waking up in some new torture device when he didn't remember falling asleep, so he twisted his mouth to the side with a small nod to accept this very immediate lifestyle choice. Not that he'd know what to do with it, his next step always seemed to be thinking too much about what might happen ten years from now if the exact right sequence of events could be influenced, but he could appreciate it.

"More than I should," he admitted, because most of those obsessive plans never came to fruition after he impulsively threw the whole chess board off of a building instead of nudging a pawn. "None of them...useful," he continued, gaze sliding away and shoulders dropping again awkwardly. Even at his most focused and restrained, none of his planning had gotten them out of that bunker, and he had to quickly craft his smile again before he went unfocused here and added brightly, "But! We've got a whole plan right now, I've got A through Omega to make sure we get results. We're getting flowers, they're going to blow Merrin's mind, she won't even make you fight a bear."

[out_of_order]

Tony's anticipation for potential problems wasn't forgotten, but it was proving difficult to prepare for a situation when someone seemed to always be ahead of you. Not that Cal thought they should just give up, but maybe they just had to tackle it differently.

The corner of his mouth twitched in a faint smirk at the admission, his nodding one in understanding. Cal stepped closer so he could give Tony a light bump, shoulder to shoulder. "Well then, I'm counting on you," he said as Tony laid out the general flow of this particular plan. Bears or no bears.

[in_extremis]

As misguided and sarcastic as the sentiment was, Tony still took it with some gratitude, lightening his practiced smile as he swayed with the bump, then swung his arm around Cal's shoulders to draw him close like they were conspiring as he led the kid back toward the living quarters. "What's with the glowing thing? Not that I don't appreciate the dramatics, naturally, but she could have had a normal favourite colour. A gothy one, sure, we could probably find a black flower--glowing's a specific ask..." And how Cal worked it out might help Tony figure out why he kept messing up handing flowers to Jon, who he smiled at tightly as they came conspiring into the galley.

[out_of_order]

The gesture eased more of a smile on his face, and Cal was willing to ride this current. Maybe they were deluding themselves, distancing from something inevitable until it would rouse its ugly head again, but Cal didn't think that dwelling in it was going to help for much either.

"I dunno," he shrugged, his smile turning shy as he thought out his reasons. "I just thought...well, it's kind of how she is. The world she's from, it's...dark, and I'll be honest, it's just not a nice place to wander. Things that want to eat you, the scenery's kind of disturbing in some places. But things still thrive there. There's plants- the pilot I travel with, he'd asked me to pick up seeds when I could find them wherever we'd go- and some of the ones in Dathomir are kind of creepy..." He shook his head. Kind of wandering there.

"Anyway...I guess it's kind of cheesy, now that I have to explain it, but Merrin's like...a light that managed to thrive despite the darkness, and everything that she's had to go through."

[in_extremis]

Tony followed along with the image easily enough, pouting thoughtfully with his head cocked and thinking what Cal was describing didn't sound all that alien, and did sound like he was trying to skirt around the question. Which made sense when he finally spit it out, and for a moment Tony gave him a sidelong look with a dangerous smirk, like they were about to find out together just how humiliated Cal could be about this dorky pronouncement.

Instead, Tony's arm grew heavier around his shoulders as he sloped closer to press the other hand to Cal's chest with an appreciative pat, and he asked, "Have you told her that?" If that was what the flowers were for, then they were really going to have to get this right.

[out_of_order]

Tony might change his mind if he actually ever saw Dathomir for himself. Cal was trying to be polite by not going into too much detail, and no one needed to know about the sacks of dead Nightsisters strung up in what passed for trees. ...they had strange burial practices.

Cal seemed to tense a little at that particular look from Tony, as though bracing himself for whatever rejoinder was loading up. He blinked as instead he got a pat and...encouragement? The corner of his lips twitched in a brief smile. "Not in those exact words," he admitted.