revivalproject | Transference

Entry tags:

Transference

WHO: Tony, Wesker?, OTA
WHERE: Around Temba, and the hospital
WHAT: Tony's doing his silly little task
WHEN: The week after this
WARNINGS: Tony continues to be miserable.

a. days 1-6
The first problem with Wesker's request was convincing a whole bunch of different people to reliably carry around some new thing on the off chance that they were caught off guard, far from help or shelter. Including children. Most people didn't even have a jack in their car. Building this mechanism into something they already carried, like their communications devices, would have been the best case scenario. The second problem with Wesker's request was that all electronic systems, including the communication devices and the network itself, were not reliable in these disaster scenarios. So much for small and portable.

Tony was going to do neither of those things. What Tony was going to do, was try not to be seen trundling around the city, sometimes dragging his wheeled cart behind him full of broken consoles, glass and steel. He looked terrible. A longer day did not make a week long enough to solve this fundamentally social problem, but if he didn't sleep and kept a careful balance of coffee and red fruit juice, he could buy himself a few more hours. It didn't really take that long, in the grand scheme of things, to erect a radio tower, after all.

These started to appear in a slow circle around the perimeters of the city first, wherever Tony could get the highest, even if that meant doing his best Spider-man (Link?) impression and scaling a building with long metal beams strapped to his back. The one that was hardest to ignore crowned the Whale Comb Sent Her, unavoidably in the middle of the city, assembled on site and bolted to the roof and trying vainly to stretch as tall as the structures around it. Inside, among some debris from some necessary remodelling work, a line of tiny bells hung along the wall, each with quickly scrawled co-ordinates and distances under them, directly onto the plaster.

The most difficult part, really, was the materials. This wasn't new technology, a crystal radio was something the Greeks had, Tony was pretty sure. It was never going to be a strong signal, but he could make that work in his favour--the closer the transmitting tower, the more bells it could ring. While he was scavenging for enough beams to erect his towers, he could be looking for something that would satisfy Wesker's request more closely.

b. day 7
He had one day left when he startled awake, not realizing he had been asleep, jerking up quickly enough that his back protested with a sharp pain where it had been contorted over the workbench. A day was plenty of time, he thought, when he found he still had a mouthful left of coffee in a nearby mug. He didn't even get up out of the seat, just found his loupe among the tools and went back to work.

It was hours later that he started to tell himself that maybe he had been counting wrong, and when Wesker had said a week, he meant starting from the next day, not from when he made his request. That would have been the fair thing.

It was when it was hard to see through the pain in his head, and the red-stained bottle was empty, that Tony thought Wesker might have been right, and he had never done any of this altruistically, and if he really wanted people safe and not just relying on him for safety he could have figured that out any time in the last 30 years. Hell, he'd had a whole week to dedicate to one, little problem. He'd had a few more than that to figure out how to make one rocket stable enough to break the atmosphere. He didn't even need a rocket, he could do what he had always done best; make a gun. Nothing had really stopped him from making one of those before, except now he had the perfect opportunity to use that natural impulse to help people. All of that explosive inspiration suddenly failed him.

It was when all of his scattered eyes around the city alerted that the sun had set that he was left staring down at a frustratingly small scrap, and had to accept that it wasn't getting finished. He pushed away from the workbench finally, every joint creaking in protest, struggling to straighten his back and blink through the pain behind his eyes as he stumbled away to the sink. While he washed his face, D.A.T.A. helpfully rallied to pack his meagre offering into his waiting jacket pocket. The water didn't really improve his face. Despite the hour, he slipped on his sunglasses after carefully fixing his hair in their reflection, and accepted the silk jacket from the robot with a muttered, "Thanks." He could have given a half-way convincing press conference, if the lighting was forgiving. He really only had one person to convince as he made his way to the hospital.

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Tony could not say for sure if they were talking about the exact same thing, but it seemed to be the language that Link was comfortable with, so he invited, "Yeah, sure." Lightning, at least, he was reasonably sure was a shared concept, so he said, "A bolt of lightning strikes anywhere, and a lot of different reactions are happening, some of them you can see--around where it hits, the impact is always circular, that energy is radiating out. If you're close enough you can feel the radiation transfer into heat--that's something you can't see, but you can sense a different way. These towers are sensitive in different ways."

Link thinks about this a moment. He's not smart, not in the way that Zelda or Dustin or Tony is. But that doesn't mean that Link isn't observant - that he hasn't noticed things about the world.

"The static and sparks." He knows that sensation. Has felt it, when calling upon Urbosa's fury. (Or when going out into a thunderstorm with metal armour on. That usually didn't end so well.)

"Those are the waves?" he says, slowly. "The towers will feel them?"

Now Tony was less sure that they were speaking the same language, because Link didn't sound that much closer to understanding with any confidence, and Tony's work slowed so he could consider the kid and what might have actually mattered to him. Maybe a more straightforward answer, for once. "There will be a switch, down near the ground," he said, "that rings a bell over in the Welcome Centre. That way, if someone is stuck out here and can't reach anybody for help, we'll know to come get them."

Meanwhile, Link had thought he had understood, at least a bit. But the mention of a bell has thrown him for a loop entirely - what does a bell have to do with lightning and waves?

"So the towers just...have bells?" he says slowly. Not a bad idea, really - he just doesn't get where everything else comes into it.

He was still speaking so carefully that Tony was sure that he had somehow made it worse, and he leaned against what he had managed to build so far with the other hand open like he could grasp at the right wire to finish this connection for Link. It didn't come. "Yeah, they have bells," he decided was a good enough conclusion, because as long as Link understood why they were here, it didn't matter so much if he understood the how. "So, if your gal is out here some day stuck in a storm, she can ring a bell for you to come and save her like a knight in shining armor. That could be a good test run, hey, get her a little excited, can't think of a better date."

Okay. So they...have bells. Or something.

Zelda would probably understand what Tony was trying to explain. Unfortunately, it's just Link here. And he does not.

"Don't have my shiny armour." He's just got what his Gerudo outfit, and all the clothes Lark made him. Also, to be honest, his soldier's armour was never really his favourite. Too awkward, too clunky.

As usual, Tony did not know what to make of this answer, if he was supposed to take it as a condition or an excuse, and this time left him considering if there was that much of a divide between encouragement and arguing. His mouth hung open in the time it took him to decide which side he she lean more toward, not for the first time wishing Link would be more openly hostile instead of whatever this was. Indifference? At least being able to get on his nerves would mean Tony had his attention. "I'll put mine on then, you hang back, if you don't hear from us you'll know it's going well," he landed on, head tilted and eyes narrowed, not sure if Link would even hear the challenge.

Link’s just trying to keep up with Tony’s jumps in thought. And failing, if his furrowed eyebrows are any indication.

“Hang back from…someone needing help!” That can’t really be what Tony is suggesting, is it? Surely he would want Link to help.

An anodyne testing scenario transforming into something more volatile in Link's language might have suggested that Tony had hit on something that finally actually needled at him, though he was still left staring at Link with a thoughtful tilt of his head, not sure which part had closed the connection. "I mean, listen, you're the one putting the breaks on over a wardrobe complication," he said, hand up like he was sympathetic to Link's sensitivities. "I wouldn't let a thing like that hold me back, so I'll step in until you can sort that out. Don't worry, I'm sure she'll understand, too, and will be perfectly satisfied."

“But…you said…” Link starts, eyebrows furrowing even further. He only said he didn’t have his armour because Tony said he was going to wear it. For…something. To do with the bells, or rescuing people, or Zelda.

He’s used to listening to Zelda ramble. And she can ramble, talking so far sometimes Link can barely keep up. He should be used to this. But Zelda - even if talking quickly - does still stay on the same topic. While Tony jumps around, leaping from topic to topic and then back again so quickly that Link’s left all tangled up trying to follow it. His social skills, poor and under-utilised as they are, just aren’t enough.

“Can you…make sense?” Link asks, finally. Maybe just a little bid desperately. “...Please?”

The aggression in Tony's posture didn't quite bleed out, the weight of it shifting more internally with a tick of irritation as he glanced guiltily away. They were written in very different languages, and Tony should have had more patience instead of expecting Link could keep up. "Yeah, listen, I'm being an asshole, I'm really trying to get this done, and I haven't had a drink in about an hour..." he muttered, mostly to the floor as he swung back around toward his tower, only really acknowledging Link with a hand sneaking between them to pluck at his sleeve. Belatedly, he realized he probably should have started with, "Sorry."

The sudden sheepishness and apology isn’t what Link expects. It hadn’t ever occurred to him that Tony’s rapid-fire speech and frequent subject changing was him being…mean.

There’s an awkward moment there, where Link isn’t sure how to respond. He almost wants to be mean back in relatalation. Maybe knock some of Tony’s things off the top of the building, see how he likes that.

But Tony had also said he hasn’t had a drink. And in the end, Link’s persistent desire to be helpful wins out over any desire to be petty.

“I have water,” he says softly, before fishing out his leather flask, and holding it out towards Tony.

Tony looked at first like he might reject the offer, narrow eyed and lips twisted to the side like Link was being petty in the gesture. It took another breath for Tony to nod with a twirl of his finger though he didn't raise his hand, a whole conversation with himself before he could manage a more gracious, "Thanks," and gingerly take the flask. He didn't look like he entirely knew what to do with it, fingers delicately raised and hands wandering, not so comfortable with the silence. "I can put this somewhere else, if you would prefer. I was just looking for high points, where a building looked reasonably secure, where someone might be able to hide."

The offering of water, at least, is not a petty gesture. But maybe Link will still kick a tool off the building, like a disgruntled cat. Maybe.

He's keeping the option open. If he feels like it.

"Why would it matter, what I prefer?" Link had no claim on the building. His permission wasn't needed.

Link never did tell Tony what he was doing up here, so the question left Tony the one staring and feeling like he had missed something, waiting for some context that had surely been demanded at some point. Since Link seemed to be completely unaware that he was, in fact, here first, Tony had to assume that there was some logic to giving Tony that claim and concluded, "Were you waiting for me?"

Link blinks. Apparently, that wasn't a question he was expecting.

"No?" he says. "I was looking."

At the landscape, at the beginnings of Tony's tower construction, at Tony himself...which one it is, Link doesn't say. Although perhaps it's all of them.

That wasn't a particularly illustrative answer, though Tony could see how just looking at something would not give someone claim over it. Not him, obviously, but someone else. He waited with an expectant lift of a brow, like anything about talking to Link had ever let him to believe that Link was likely to elaborate, and eventually dropped his shoulders to try to find the answer himself with a scan out along the skyline. It was no New York. If the act was supposed to be meditative and enlightening, he might not have had the disposition for it. "And what did you see?" he deferred.

Link makes no claim on anything. Except, perhaps, the right to climb all over anything and everything.

"Your tower. You. A lizard." A lizard which appears to no longer be present - at least not until Link reaches into his pocket, and pulls a three-inch long lizard. Seems Link had managed to collect it just before Tony arrived.

He holds the lizard out towards Tony, to let him get a good look. It wriggles.

Alright, maybe enlightenment was a little beyond both of them. Tony's eyes narrowed as he tried to formulate any meaning from 'a lizard', leaving him unprepared for being presented with one, and muttering, "Oh," when Link produced it. It was a perfectly fine lizard, for as much as Tony knew about lizards, and its weird squirming had him raising a lip slightly with a delicate hand to his chest, like Link had made this offer at a black tie affair. "Is it...should it be in your pocket like that? Can it breathe?" was all that occurred to him to ask, not sure if he cared much about the lizard's quality of life, but certainly taking a stand against the sensation of finding a dead reptile in one's pocket.

Link blinks. Looks at the lizard with a vague air of surprise. Apparently, ‘can the lizard breathe’ is not a thing he has considered until now.

Which means he also has no answer for Tony. Except a shrug.

He seems much less bothered by the potential for having a dead lizard in his pocket than Tony is.

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Transference

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