Paranoia

[in_extremis]

WHO: Ed'n'Tony
WHERE: The Forge
WHAT: Surviving the blizzard
WHEN: During the storm
WARNINGS: CW: Blood, amputation, alcoholism, parental abuse, the horrors


The problem was that Tony was stupid.

In another life, he had managed to make a remarkable iron suit that could withstand bullets and a walk across a country with a trash can lid and a car battery. Now, he had pickled his brain, regressed, probably should have stayed out in the snow where he belonged instead of being such a coward. The suit that he had come here in, in dazzling red and gold that streaked effortlessly over the rooftops of the city, felt like it had been made by someone else, someone that actually understood basic electromagnetism, someone who could probably start it with a pair of jumper cables to make it at least functional enough to walk back through the snow. This Tony, the one that apparently couldn't build anything in the very same workshop, had tried to make that walk in desperation without it, instead wrapped only in a dusty curtain. Without Extremis, he didn't even have the nanoweb. Without Extremis, when the cold started deadening his skin, when it started to prickle with phantom heat instead, he knew he could only go so far before that skin wasn't going to heal.

It had been slow going in the battering of the storm, and then he stopped, staring ahead into an unforgiving blanket of white, not even completely sure of the direction he was facing, and tried to ignore the pooling acid of guilt in his chest as he looked back over his shoulder, toward the forge and its perpetual fire.

By the time he had made it back to the heavy, iron door, it was heaped with snow that he had to dig out with his numb hands, not even feeling the burn anymore, trying not to look too closely at them.

His blackened fingertips made him slow and clumsy to work, made him shake with frustration with every minute that passed and he was still here, and every obsessive attempt to reconnect to the network felt like a void growing bigger in his brain with every tap. If Jon went out into the snow, like he had wandered out into the fog, he wouldn't know how to get back. If the suit had failed, so had the generator in the hospital. If Omega and Echo were out patrolling, their footsteps would be filling with snow faster than they could retrace them.

The fire at his back burned hot enough to melt metal into a wonderful, useless pile of junk, but Tony shivered.

Comments

sorry tony <3

[saltnpepperbeard]

All ready breathing heavily, Ed's brief glare at the joke was made less effective by the tears pooling in his eyes.

Daddy Issues galore, apparently. Ed wanted to run hide. He wanted Stede, and that kind reassurance. But Tony was a close substitute for now. Standing up to the ghost, down a finger and definitely in shock by now.

Father teach gave an amused huff, a familiar drunken sway to hi as he stepped forward, and Ed squeezed his eyes shut tight. He missed the moment the man disappeared, scrambling to shelter under one of the tables. It was a pitiful image, and not one he wanted witnessed again, muttering to himself under his breath.

This wasn't the time to be spiraling over a man who had been dead for decades.

[in_extremis]

At first, it was a relief to Tony that he didn't actually have to swing his balled fist, struck still as the threat suddenly vanished like it was never there at all. He continued to stare, like he might see through whatever illusion was there, then glanced around the workshop to make sure no other dads were lurking in the shadows and--where was Ed?

He bent over first, eyebrows raised to peer inquisitively under the table, then gathered in a frown as he crouched with his arms balanced on his knees with his wounded hand caged gingerly in the other. Now, he kind of would preferred being able to fight the problem, because that was a much easier equation than tears, and for a moment he just had some uncomfortable shuffling and an expression of pinched irritation as he tried to look anywhere else.

"Weird that we've had to talk about your balls more than once already," he finally produced.

[saltnpepperbeard]

Ed managed a teary laugh, and sniffed, glancing away in shame at the state he was in. Time was he would have gutted Tony then and there for seeing him in such a vulnerable state. (Or had Iz do it...) But Stede's...softened him.

"Can think of worse topics of conversation," he countered, wiping away tears with a rough hand, trying to collect himself, but not quite ready to come out from under the table just yet.

"You've got the biggest pair in this room, clearly," he added. Man cut off his own finger and challenged a god damn ghost to a fist fight.

[in_extremis]

There wasn't much energy left in the tank for Tony to laugh, only enough to get him to a wry smile and sharp exhale before even the expression had to drop. Taking a swing at a drunk didn't exactly merit the highest of honours, he thought, so he just gave a tip of his head and click of his tongue for that, and didn't really know how to follow up because the only other display in comparison seemed to be an ongoing problem that neither of them really wanted to acknowledge. Without anything else to focus on, the only sound left was the howl of the wind, and the crackle of the fire. Eventually, Tony had to let himself drop back onto the ground so he didn't start trembling on his perch on his heels, still looking anywhere else as he wondered, "Did you really do it? Kill your dad."

[saltnpepperbeard]

Ed's gaze wavered, flicking to the ground and he nodded. "...Bastard deserved it," he muttered with a shrug, but he couldn't quite shake that frown. "...I was just a slip of a thing then," he added, "But with that much drink in him it wasn't hard."

He attempted to harden his gaze back up, blinking a few times, and crawling out from under the table to look reach for Tony's wrist. "He always did have shit timing," he muttered, examining the damage with a sigh. "Not sure how you're still standing, man. Let alone ready to fend off the undead."

[in_extremis]

Tony couldn't think of a situation where someone deserved to die. Where it was necessary, sometimes, or where it couldn't be helped, but as Ed came crawling closer, Tony watched him, inquisitive and bleak, trying to make sense of that particular choice of phrase. He gave a grimace as Ed took his wrist, more for the gruesome display it made, and for the shaking he thought he had managed to hide by grounding himself more and wasn't so easy to conceal as it vibrated under his skin. He had to try to shrug it off, casting around for something else to focus on. "Mine was always the most frightening when he was that drunk," wasn't a massive improvement. The defence of the position only felt worse as Tony tried to fill the space, "Unstoppable, you know, couldn't be talked out of anything, get his mind on something and get angry about it and that was it until he was out, so, listen, that's like taking a car crash head on, for a kid, he was right about the balls."

[saltnpepperbeard]

Ed was silent a beat, but cast his eyes down and nodded his understanding, his posture shifting some with the knowledge that Tony intimately understood. Most dad's were shit as far as Ed could tell, but there was a certain only threshold a boy could take before it was too much.

"...wouldn't've cared so much if he just bothered with me. But he was always on her. About everything. And then he'd go to spend money we didn't have on more drink." He distanced himself from delving too deep into the memory with his observations of Tony, rough fingers trying to soothe that tremor. "Yours isn't going to visit us too, is he?"

[in_extremis]

Tony didn't have a lot of context for how much worse some of his childhood experience would be without the money--most of the time, he thought it was the money that had controlled the form of it, given his dad the power to behave as he did, the reason to resent Tony for not deserving it, and the means to keep as much distance between them as possible. It was something of a mercy, maybe, that he didn't really know what his parents' relationship was like, never seeing them enough alone. And at least Howard's habits didn't threaten the bottom line. Maybe he could kind of understand what Ed meant by deserved then.

The shiver wasn't really going away, worse maybe as Tony blinked and cleared his throat before he could shrug it off and and mutter, "Don't worry, you missed him." If the ghost really was his dad, and it gave a very convincing performance, then it didn't want to be here, either.

[saltnpepperbeard]

"Heh-" Ed gave a weak laugh at their shared past, and after a final breath, seemed to draw up his strength again, giving a nod to steady himself.

"...let's not draw this out longer than we need to, mm?" he said finally, nodding back towards the bloody table top.

[in_extremis]

Dwelling on this unexpected camaraderie was about as excruciating to Tony as cutting off his limbs, or at least he thought as much as he raised his eyebrows and resigned to pulling himself back up onto his feet by the table. It was only when he was back up and could see the blood at the bit of finger that used to be very attached to him that he wavered, literally, and had to blink and take a deep breath to come up with a good joke to dispel any doubts about his constitution as he kept himself balanced on the worktop; "Eugh." Not his best work. Something, something, drawing out, foreplay maybe--Tony waved his free hand in the air, for Ed to extrapolate that inspired take from his grunt.

[saltnpepperbeard]

Ed drew in a breath through his teeth, swatting the bit of finger, and pulling free his knife with a nod. 'Eugh' indeed.

"This is why we drink," he reminded with a tut, pressing down on Tony's wrist so he could jerk away, and swiftly cutting off the next bit of blackened flesh with a grimace. "Theeeere we are." A spurt of blood sprayed across his cheek, and Ed looked only mildly annoyed rather than utterly horrified, sticking the knife in the table so he could teach for the heated tool again.

[in_extremis]

That time it did definitely hurt. It might have hurt the first time, too, Tony was realizing, very belatedly, because it still hurt in a constant, throbbing, too much to think about kind of way, and trying to escape from that assault by clawing his fingers back only made both of them hurt more as the skin tore and the panic made the blood streak across the table. And Ed. Tony tried to complain, maybe even make a joke again, distract them both, but what came out of his mouth was a breathy whimper, and he thought if he kept trying what came out next might be a mess. He swallowed thickly to try to push that bile back down, blinking rapidly to clear his vision just in time to see Ed reach for that searing iron again. His heart was in his throat then, just for a second. Luckily, in the next second, he was crumpling bonelessly to the floor.