revivalproject | [Open] Worried Mama Lark

"We were fine, everything was fine," Tony was already waving off again before Lark was even finished, sauntering closer to better inspect her, what she was carrying, and the dog who Tony cocked his head at and had him slowing his step slightly. He'd hardly had to bother, though, because he was stopping as Lark just told him what it was she had, rolling his eyes with as much theatrics as her sigh, though he did start to self-consciously wipe a hand on his shirt. "Make yourself comfortable," he instructed, starting to wave the other hand to invite Lark to help herself to the forge as he backtracked toward the bathroom, then aborting as he tried to offer, "Take a sea--..." There still wasn't much in here to lounge around on. Tony cleared his throat and raised a finger to promise he would only be a second as he slipped into the bathroom.

Over the sound of the water through the open door, he could call, "I thought maybe you were gone. None of us had our phones. I thought..." Even with just the mirror to look into, though, he didn't really want to say any more. The water stopped, followed by a thunk as Tony lifted the mirror from the wall to leave it tucked beside the sink instead, on the floor. He was smiling when he came back out, enough to say, "I'm glad you aren't. Is that fucked up? I mean, I'm sorry you're here..."

They were fine, huh? Everything was fine, huh? Oh she does not believe it. Still, he goes off to do what he is going to do and she finds a clean area to put down her container of warm soup. Then she pulls out bowls too and makes a noise at Little Bear. The dog goes to lay by the door, which is important. He knows how to act at forges.

"I thought you were all suffering. I was scared for you, Tony. And I know that you, you're prone to undervaluing yourself, so I was afraid you were hurt for everyone else. It seemed your way."

Suffering was the most logical conclusion that Tony didn't have a great argument against, unable to foresee the day that they were lured into some bunker for a nice time and a case of Dr. Pepper. Still, he tried to shake his head, eyebrows raised placatingly as he approached, and offered a reassuring hand to Lark's cheek to point out that they were all here and in no more pieces than they had left, only for his expression to drop with a baffled frown. "Under--?" he started to echo, then waved a finger at Lark's inverted interpretation to help her before anyone else had the chance to call her crazy. "You've just never asked me how exquisitely beautiful I am," he pointed out, then just as readily provided, "Off the charts, thank you for asking." Before she could push him on that, he went rattling on, repeating, "Everyone's fine, listen, we were fed, we had beds, we all got to hold hands and play board games every night, practically summer camp. Did you go to summer camp?"

Oh but how she laughs at his comment.

"You are, indeed, quite fetching. However I don't think you need someone to tell you."

Summer camp? The woman raises an eyebrow at that.

"I do not know what you mean, because I suspect you don't mean camping in the summer."

See, he didn't undervalue himself at all. Most would agree that he severely overvalued, in fact, so Lark appreciating his spot on evaluation earned her a waggle of Tony's eyebrows and slow smile. Maybe now she'd stop being so...frustrated with him, and could tune him out like a normal friend.

He pulled himself up onto the table next to where she was trying to lay out her nice offering, and explained, "Well--kind of, yes, there is camping in the summer." For a moment, it didn't seem like there was much more to the phenomenon to explain, they had covered the basics, but that wasn't what Tony meant. "When you're a kid, and you're home from school so your parents have to figure out how to get you out of their house for a few weeks before they strangle you, so they send you out in the woods on the other side of the country with a bunch of strangers and you play Dungeons and Dragons. Summer camp." Some of those details had to hit on something familiar.

Tony knows exactly what she means, even if he refuses to hear it. What a foolish young man.

"This is not something that happens in my world, though I suppose nobility will send their children to fosterage for years. But that is less common these days. Come, settle down. There is something like rice with the soup, which I have made from very savory mushrooms and some other vegetables. It is quite heartening, though not too heavy. And if you behave and eat everything, you may have your gift."

Between telling him to wash his hands and to behave, Lark was really starting to sound like Cap, and Tony was starting to regret being so obedient about the hands. Even if she did make the soup sound really good, and, okay, actual food that Lark made was a vast improvement over the paste that was available in the bunker. Even as he leaned over to pluck the cover from the container to sniff curiously, he tried to purse his lips like he was being unfairly accosted by these demands.

"My gift?" he echoed, looking slightly suspicious that she hadn't only come here to feed him. Maybe that was what the dog was about, she needed something for him. "I usually try not to eat too much on a date, you know, so I'm not too bloated by the time the gift-giving part happens." He dropped both hands to the table to lean closer to Lark with a disarming grin, a dangerous glint in his eye betraying how much this performance was for finding out how combative he could get away with, "We could do the gift part first, work up the appetite."

Truly he was an odd man, and she would find a way to see him taken care of, even if it was only in fits and starts.

"This is no date, Tony. This is someone helping take care of you," she reminds him, before reaching into her bag. She pulls out a scarf, dyed a soft shade of red, and even with yellow tassels on the end. It had taken extra work for those tassels, so he hopefully appreciated them.

"A glownie wool scarf, very light. I've enchanted it to be soft as well, so nothing scratchy. For you."

Appreciation might have been one way to explain Tony's expression as Lark produced the scarf. He hadn't moved back at all, not deterred by Lark's insistence that this was not a date, but his smile had fallen and his eyes were wide and--panicked. Truthfully, she could have revealed the ugliest knitwear in the multiverse, and right then Tony's voice still might have trembled as he tried, "Uh--..." It was obvious, in hindsight, now that she said it, that what Lark was doing most of the time was trying to take care of him, and it wasn't just some game or backlog of favours that she was building to cash in eventually. It did make Tony's chest ache, a horribly physical pain, to be told, though, and that he had to be told, and maybe any other day he could have handled that, laughed it off, promised she didn't have to work so hard to get him into bed. Today, with his eyes not quite focused on the scarf, he muttered, "I don't deserve that," then started to raise one hand off of the table to stop her from doing that thing she did, arguing with him and exasperated, because he could handle that even less right now.

Oh Tony. It's just written on her face, the soft and sad lines. An unspoken oh Tony you deserve so much. But she doesn't say it. She just reaches out to pat his arm before putting the scarf near him.

"If you do not like it, gift it to someone else. It was made for you, and it's not about if you deserve it, it's about my desire to show affection."

Tony was doing his best not to look directly at Lark until he had himself under control again, so the pat made him tense to keep from flinching, then he had to very quickly assure them both, "No, I'm keeping it," as he snatched up the scarf about as soon as it hit the table. It did give him something to clutch to his chest as he let out a watery laugh, see, it was funny, he was joking, because he really didn't mean to reject the gift at all. He wasn't going to get this kind of quality anywhere else. He did look like he might wrench it apart as he searched for how to explain himself, though.

"I, um--" was the best he could do before he grimaced and shook his head, and tried another breath. If he knew how to explain it, he was pretty sure it wouldn't be a problem. He wouldn't be a problem. "You should spend your time on people who are going to be kind to you," he felt out.

"You think you aren't kind to me? Yes, you've got bluster and sharp corners, but you remind me of my Rosethorn. If she was male. And liked metal. And flirted. So not really like her save for the pushing someone away for fear of being hurt."

And yes, she liked that in Rosethorn.

"Face it, young man, you're going to have trouble here, because I am stubborn. We are tied together, bound like fibers spun into a thread. I will be there to keep you strong as you need it. And you are here to make me remember those I love, even if you don't intend it."

There wasn't a lot of kindness that Tony could think of that he had done for anyone here, not just Lark, and all of his experiences in that bunker had very effectively calibrated his awareness of the harm he was capable of instead. Her rapidly crumbling attempt to make her point did draw a surprised laugh out of Tony, though, still strangled but more genuine as he managed to cut a sidelong glance Lark's way to ask in what other myriad ways he wasn't very much like Rosethorn at all. She did sound pretty great, thorns and all.

"I'm not pushing..." he started to sigh, because it was Lark that he thought he was trying to save some headache for here, but there might have been a little, tiny part of him that was trying to save himself, too, maybe. It was vanishingly unlikely that Lark had also killed his parents somehow, but it wasn't like he'd had any reason to expect that from a childhood hero, either, and managed to blow up at Bucky Barnes because he had been the one to let his guard down.

What energy he had gathered rapidly went out of him and his expression crumpled again as Lark insisted she was stuck with him, and he shook his head again. "I don't know if I can get you back to her," he admitted, because he thought it would have been safe to keep talking about Rosethorn, and safer still if it helped Lark realize his worth, and he wasn't prepared for how much it hurt to voice this profound failure.

Oh but he is. That's just who he is. But she reaches out to touch his hand. Lark was almost as much about touching Tony as he was about touching himself.

"You are too young to carry such weight of expectation, Tony. I have no expectation that you will solve this. Would it not be just as wrong for me to apologize for not being able to get you back to the people you knew? We all have or own power here, to find our way home or not. It isn't all on you."

There had to be a threshold for how pathetic Lark was just going to let him be, so Tony winced, ready for a much firmer hand than the one that alighted on his. He wanted to stop as much as he expected she wanted him to, so he forced his shoulders down from their taut pinch and freed a finger from its clutch around the scarf to tangle around on of Lark's, bringing the other hand up to shove with frustration across his damp lashes. Her insistence on calling him young forced another watery laugh out of him, but he shrugged with another rejection, not convinced by this false equivalence.

"You help people, sweetheart. You bring them soup and scarves when they don't even know they need it," he pointed out. "I'm--I don't know how--" This was a conversation he had meant to have, he realized, only under more flattering circumstances, like maybe when he seemed capable of following through. He took a breath and tried again; "I've been pretending to be a hero because I can fix these big problems."

There would be a threshold, yes. But he had yet to reach it. Sometimes one needed to lance the wound and let all the bad run out before you bound it and told the patient to stop scratching. Sometimes you had to find the end of the tangle and unravel it before winding the spool, for cutting out good with bad would set you back far more.

Okay, there were a lot of metaphors, but she was moving on. She took his laugh with a soft smile and leaned forward to kiss his forehead in the same way she would that of a worried youth in her care.

"You help people too, Tony. Your methods are different, but you help us. I wouldn't be able to do my magic or work without the things you have given me. But I'm not expecting you to fix everything. And anyone who does puts too much weight on your shoulders. They are broad, but they cannot hold us all up. One of the first lessons a mage must learn is that you cannot solve all the world's ills on your own. Sometimes you can't even solve them with a wealth of other mages working in harmony with you. That doesn't mean you're pretending to be a hero, though. There are many ways to be a hero, and you sacrifice yourself enough to prove to be one of the number."

This wasn't quite as fractious and miserable as confronting the idea that he had been in Lark's misguided care this whole time, leaving Tony more anxious and hollow than on the verge of tears. Familiar territory. It wasn't quite so revelatory that he was working at a deficit, and those big fixes were the only way for him to gain ground that a few needles and scissors were not going to help, but that didn't make Lark's kiss and voice any less reassuring.

"Alright, you don't have to call me names," he grumbled at the implication that he was the mage in this situation. He gave a sniff and guided Lark back with the hand he still hung loosely onto, with a small nod to assure her that he was fine, he wasn't going to break apart without her holding him together anymore.

Carefully even, so she didn't think he still needed an affirming speech, he tried to contextualize, "I know I can't really explain why we're all here yet, but it's become clear to me that where I'm from--my Earth--they're better off without me, that the best thing I can do for them is stay away, and...I don't want to be that, here." He could have stayed at the bottom of that hole, and was afraid to find out what would happen if he tried now. Being forced to take another breath after experiencing Felwinter's point-blank shot to the face was painful enough. "There's less people, less vectors to find a way to screw it up and--I'm still hurting people--but if I can build something here, if everyone can know that they're safe when they wake up by that fountain...I don't know what's stopping me." Lark, on the other hand, seemed to come by that talent naturally, so Tony looked to her hopefully to ask, "Where would you start?"

"If I would call you names they would be ones you would not take from me I expect. Brave. Compassionate. Sweet."

She wasn't letting go yet. Not yet. Though she looks annoyed at the idea that anyone is better off without him.

"Who said you're hurting people? Because I think they might need to find their clothes are vaguely just barely too tight for a bit."

Yes, her brand of passive aggressive anger is more interesting than most.

Still... he has asked a question and she will consider it seriously.

"IF you mean truly build, I'd find a way to make sure people don't feel alone when they arrive. Is that possible? For you to find a way to see when someone is here, and then make sure that someone knows to come talk to them? To give them some sort of things to help them adjust to living here? Tools or help finding a place to be safe? That seems the wisest place to start."

In her case she'd give them a nice blanket, but she can't make that much thread and thus cloth.

As predicted, Tony grimaced at these accusations, not exactly the powerful, masculine image he was supposed to be presenting for success, nor the person he had learned he was in other people's heads. They were clearly qualities that Lark valued, though, and put in the work to practice them, so maybe Tony should have been working a little harder at them than his ineffective facade.

With a snort of laughter for Lark's petty revenge, he shook his head, no, no one had to say it, he was a fast learner, but he was willing to accept, "In that case, everyone got together and wrote this letter..." with an innocent glance up to the ceiling where he definitely wasn't thinking of who he wanted to see in a tight t-shirt the most.

His focus was slow to return to her, but it did so steadily, listening attentively for where he had to make and he had to plan. With a knot of frustration for being half way there, he could already provide, "I do know, when they arrive. I have the cameras," and gestured toward the box he had been collecting when Lark arrived. "I was just going to do some maintenance." He tilted his head thoughtfully, then proposed, "We could mark it off, around the fountain, and I could set up the area to detect motion and alert everyone when someone was nearby. But...How do you know what will help? People are showing up here from dimensions where they--talk to string."

Oh don't be stupid with the machismo. Masculinity is not a distance from gentleness.

"I am assuming it will help some. It is a human thing, to want connections with others. In fact, it's also true of dogs and even cats. Seeing another person, knowing you aren't alone, and getting advice from someone already going through it? It would have helped me a good deal. And don't say talk to. String doesn't respond."

But it does react.

Lark was correct; what exactly any new arrivals would respond to positively was an unfounded worry, at least so far. A being from an incomprehensible corner of the universe would still appreciate an attempt at connection when they were flung across it. Tony tipped slightly forward to catch a glimpse of Lark's giant dog waiting so patiently at the door at the reminder, watching him curiously.

"I never had a dog," he muttered, not without some longing. He probably couldn't damage a dog too badly if they didn't understand what he was saying, if they just appreciated having someone around. Maybe that was where he really had to start, with the mothcats. Or a plant. A new arrival wasn't going to wait on him to get his shit together, though. "I'm sorry I wasn't there," he added, very belatedly. "I am trying to be...closer. At the library, instead of out here."

Never had a dog? Lark looked back over her shoulder toward Little Bear.

"He's very well trained about forges. Frostpine and Daja saw to that. He doesn't come in because he knows it could be bad. But you're welcome to go out and greet him. And he's very friendly."

Little Bear must know he's being spoken of, because his tail starts thumping on the ground.

"You aren't responsible for being there, Tony. You aren't responsible for any of us but yourself. But the kindness you try to extend shows how big your heart is."

It was becoming apparent that it would be easier to determine what craft Lark didn't have experience in, at least by association, so she probably had a pretty good idea of what tools would be best to greet anyone waking up at the fountain with. Although he started to smile at the dog's tail wagging, he quickly drew himself back with a small wave of his hand like Lark had just offered some hospitality that he didn't want her putting herself out for.

"That's the multiple heart attacks," he corrected with a tap to his chest, then apologetic wave for the terrible joke. "I am, though," he said more seriously. "I've been here so long, that is my responsibility, and if I had been doing it then Beck wouldn't be running around in the woods losing what's left of his mind, and Soldier wouldn't be missing, and Felwinter wouldn't have been hurt, and the kid wouldn't have been staying with him in the first place. It's a straight line." He tapped his chest again.

So many crafts, Tony. If it's not about threadcraft, she's limited.

"It is not your responsibility. It's the Agrii's. And I've heard there are those who have been here longer, so if it's anyone's responsibility, it is theirs."

So there's that. Ha! Countered.

"Don't take all of the blame. Leave some for the rest of us."

Tony did not looked convinced, quite unable to let go of blame in any capacity, but he sucked his teeth and at least stopped glaring at Lark like she was telling him he had magical powers again. It was probably all of their responsibility, to be more connected and watchful for problems like Beck. Tony still felt like a weak link.

"Is this part of your job?" he asked, first down at the scarf in his hand, then looking to Lark like he expected her to not be entirely truthful. "In the...monastery or whatever..." She had definitely corrected him several times about the exact nature of her commitment, and he tried to get his question out quickly before she had to correct him again, "Absolving people of their sins?"

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