revivalproject | Transference

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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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Steve looks at Tony like he's talking nonsense, and then reaches out to take his shoulder, again, not letting Tony shrug him off this time if that's what he's going to do. He has no idea what that was about.

"You're not on a clock. I have no idea why you think there's some sort of deadline for you to invent something. No, you've never built a spaceship before, as far as I know, so I don't know why anyone would expect you to have figured that out if you don't even have enough resources to build a suit."

He wonders if Tony has lost so much sleep that he's delusional, because he sure as hell isn't making a whole lot of sense. "Hey, how about this. You show me what you're working on, and get some sleep. And while you're doing that, I help you come up with a couple new ideas to try." How he can promise this when everything looks like actual gobbledygook to him on a normal day is beyond him. "How's that?"

No wonder Steve was being so gentle with him, he hardly expected anything from Tony. While Tony hadn't made the move to brush Steve away this time, a flicker of tension that he rerouted to tap a restless, hollow sound on his chest, his eyes widened with surprise, then darted away guiltily. "Captain, darling, I don't know how to tell you this, but I think Tony's been hiding the spaceship from you," he decided was the only rational explanation. When he stopped focusing all of his money and effort on the machine of war, he could hardly be kept within the atmosphere. Especially after the Avengers. "And--I have. Made a suit. Several. You're not listening, they didn't help, I didn't help, I'm trying to be better, and the guy that beat the last one off of me thinks I should be making...this." He turned and dragged what he had finished of the fabric across the table, prompting the robot that had been sitting there quietly observing Steve suddenly spring up protectively, his thin, needle-like leg shooting out of his shell to try to tap down and stop the cloth from whispering away. Spread across the table as it was, it didn't look like much; a dull metallic, very thin and silky, delicate like a handkerchief. It was only when Tony flipped over the corner of it that it revealed why Tony had been fixated on it; where the right side of the fabric lay, the table underneath suddenly appeared through it, a perfect laser cut through the little triangle corner, like there was nothing there at all.

Okay, well, he wouldn't exactly be surprised if Tony was also a rocket scientist, but he honestly also didn't think that he was. Or that he was hiding that bit from Steve, at home. Well, okay, maybe he'd done that out in California, and Steve hadn't known about it, because he'd never actually gone to visit Tony out in California, had he?

Right, he is going to put a tab in the idea that someone beat a suit off of him and then assigned him some sort of a task, whatever that meant. Sure the suit would've been helpful fighting the demobeasts, but sure, he can run with the narrative that they're not. It's fine.

"Okay," he says. "So it's a cloaking device. You made it. It took you a week." He's not really seeing where the problem here is.

The technology was there, sure, the concept had translated from the stealth armor and Steve, in all of his aggravating generosity, would have been satisfied with just that. "Uh-huh," Tony answered, hoping Steve would figure out that this was not the end of the conversation or solution to the problem before Tony had to start an argument with him again, only Tony did not have the patience to wait that out and was snatching his scrap of fabric up to drop onto Steve's head, where it was barely long enough to drape over his brow. "What is anyone supposed to do with that?," Tony snapped. "And if, okay, we pretend I can just whip up enough of it to be a jacket or whatever, who is going to use it? I can't just hand out a bunch of rags and expect everyone to keep one in their back pocket, in case the next time something horrible happens, it would be equally as helpful to just get behind the couch. That's--this is nothing, this is stupid. The brief is stupid. But as soon as I say that, I'm the asshole who's making excuses not to help anybody, and maybe that is what I've been doing this whole time, so I'm making this stupid nothing, and I don't know what's going to feel worse, when I'm right and I still haven't helped anybody, or he's right and I'm here complaining about doing the bare minimum."

And about the time that Tony places the cloth over Steve is the time when he thinks that Tony has officially lost his mind. He definitely needs a nap. A long nap. A full night's unadulterated sleep. Maybe a few days' worth. But Steve tries to back all this up so that he can make any sense of what Tony is saying or doing.

"Okay. So. Someone beat you up and destroyed your suit last week. And told you that you have a week to design... something. Helpful. And you made an invisibility cloak, and now you're regretting having made it." He looks at Tony like he's got two heads. "Did I get that all right?"

Not to mention - if Tony wasn't able to do anything he considers "helpful" in a few years, then how was putting a deadline on it and no limits supposed to actually get anything done? He shakes his head.

The details weren't precise, but that was all of the important beats, Tony had to admit, even though Cap laying it out like that made the whole problem sound very trivial and he was looking at Tony like he should have been aware of that this whole time. The only defence that Tony really had was, "Well, the suit--that was a while ago...," like the timeline made it seem any more important. "And then, this thing with the demon creatures in the Mirror Universe, I should have seen that coming, and instead I had spent the weeks leading up to it thinking the most vital thing I could be doing was making sure the kids around here were in school, like that would even matter if I let them all get eaten by bats, who even cares about that, so, he was right, and he just tells me to make something, and this is the best I can do. Stop looking at me like that."

Steve continues looking at Tony like that because he wonders if Tony hadn't actually stopped to think if this was all a terrible idea, and if he had just maybe considered that it was instead of going in and implementing it the first chance that he got, that maybe things would be different and he wouldn't have spent sleepless nights designing a cloaking fabric to hide.

"How were you supposed to predict the mirror universe demon creatures coming?" he asks, looking at Tony like he's still trying to catch up with the actual words he's saying and not just their meaning. "Look." He takes a breath. "I guess you could have used the data that already exists to make a predictive model the way that weathermen have tools to predict the weather. But I'm not sure we even have the backlog of information to do anything useful with it."

Point one, squared off.

"Also, the fate of everyone doesn't rest squarely on your shoulders, Tony. I don't know why you think it does. It's why we have a team. It's why -" He pinches the bridge of his nose. "- So what, we train the kids in combat. We make an armory of weapons that don't require knowledge of alien tech. There's a lot of things we could do, and all of them allow you to get some rest."

"Because--!" Tony was very ready to explain why it was entirely his fault that he didn't predict the next disaster, but Steve was still talking, and explaining that would mean explaining why the demon creatures themselves were also his fault. Steve was already having trouble comprehending the current, right now, splitting branch of Tony's failure, he was going to give up on Tony if he knew the profundity of it.

And he wilted, not just wired and frustrated but heartsick at the suggestion that the training would be in combat, and that he should be making weapons, always weapons, even to put them in the hands of children himself. Gladio thought so, too, that was how Tony convinced him to help, and he had done it, and there was a kid out there with blood on his hands because of Tony. "No, listen," he said, but all of the volume had gone out of his voice, because he knew it was a waste of time but it was still better than teaching kids to fight, "a school, math class, chess club..." It was a waste of time, and it was the reason Tony was so disappointed with the cloaking device. The real solution, the actual goal, was to make them safe.

"And there's nothing wrong with that," he says. "Education is important, too. These kids, they deserve to be given a real education, too. We don't have to stop that." Because he can't imagine what it'd be like to stop all that and only train them to be soldiers just so they'd be safe.

That's no way to live. And he'd seen Billy, firsthand, who has PTSD. He's got anger issues. But they don't have the resources here to get him the help he needs, and Steve's at an impasse where he doesn't know how to help him without making things worse.

He hasn't, at least, gotten there with Tony yet.

"But my point still stands. You don't have to shoulder this alone. We're a whole community." And he knows it's not really helping that whatever Tony's trying to say to him, he doesn't seem to be comprehending it in the way that Tony wants, which means he'll be reluctant to communicate with anyone else.

He takes a breath. "The cloak's not a bad idea." Okay, wow, he doesn't even manage to sound all that convincing. "Just. Does it scale?"

Tony wasn't entirely reassured that whatever he had set in motion with Gladio and now Steve wasn't just child soldiers with a side of calculus and he eyed Steve cautiously, not hearing any patronizing tone but unable to shake the absurdity of the pursuit when he could be watching Donnie run from demons again tomorrow. It almost felt better that he could hear that false note in Steve's voice about the cloak, because at least they both were seeing the weak points. Starting with an understanding instead of having to convince Steve of his disappointment was much more manageable.

"It's not even part of the standard Iron Man arsenal. It's specialized stealth deployment, on a suit with a thousand other redundant systems to eliminate detection. And I know how and when to use it most effectively," he said. "We didn't just hand everyone an anti-Skrull gun on Earth, either, we know that would cause more problems than would solve them. The kind of person who carries around a highly specialized piece of equipment and knows how to use it under pressure is called a superhero."

Yeah, well, Steve was really trying to make Tony feel better with that one so even though it was for the wrong reason, at least it had the intended result. Except now they're talking logistics for an item that Tony doesn't normally use and that he's not sure how it would've solved any problems that they had just faced.

Something he'd really come to appreciate about Tony is that, though he always faced new challenges, he'd always designed the suit to deal with the previous ones. Steve had noticed that every new iteration had some sort of payoff to the last one's issues, but of course, came with new problems.

So, he asks: "What is the cloaking for, then? To hide you? So you can... sneak up on the demons?" Steve, who had been rather encumbered by movement for the first half of the event, found little issue in moving around the second half - so he'd actually understand more if it was meant for a regular person to use.

"Do you think sneaking up is my style?" Tony replied, and pursed his lips with a sigh a shake of his head. He might not have exactly been a standard use case, but in a population this size, he made up a whopping 2% of users. What a cloaking device was for was going to change in every hand it landed in, and that was before the external pressure was even accounted for. "The intention was another layer of protection. Something to help people get from a high risk area to somewhere better defended. 'A defence mechanism that allows them to reach safety'."

Steve supposes what he really wanted to ask was who it's actually for, since again, he really thinks for the last thing that it'd better serve those who couldn't fight, but he'd already asked about scaling so he isn't about to ask again.

"Okay," he says, still not buying all this. "So you finish the cloaking device, and you present it to the - whoever." He's still not sure why Tony's working for this guy, did they bet on it when they sparred and the other one destroyed his suit or something?

"Then what?"

The futurist had once again failed to predict that future, opening his mouth like he had clearly worked out all of those details in his process, only to find he didn't know what good would actually come of delivering a project he didn't believe in. That was part of the problem, he was working against his instincts, because his instincts were terrible, and all of them told him this was a dead end.

"He sighs and mutters about me being more trouble than I'm worth, and sends me away to boarding school," he concluded. Maybe not the same pattern exactly. Tony had gotten better at not crying in front of people since he was four, so Wesker wouldn't have to beat the sissy out of him. "Maybe I can hand him an empty box and tell him it traps ghosts and buy myself more time."

Steve is not sure who Tony is talking about but it almost seems like he's being haunted by the ghost of Howard or something. But Tony's also not making a whole lot of sense so if that was what he perceived, then, well, that would actually track.

"Tony." He is about to shake his shoulders, but he refrains. "Whoever he is, you don't owe him anything. You don't owe him your work. I don't understand why there's a time limit." Steve really can't stand to see Tony like this. "But you don't owe him that either."

"Steve," Tony returned immediately. It was very hard to stop talking, and he eyed Steve with intent impatience for making him wait for the next valve he could release. "I do. Not just him, I owe everyone, I owe you, this is my mistake to fix and maybe this is how I get there instead of making it worse. And not doing this, not doing what he says, that will make it worse, because if I don't he's going to find someone else to do it, and 'someone else' before me was a couple of kids that he gave severe radiation poisoning and waved a gun at. I shouldn't have let that happen."

"You don't," he says. "You don't owe me." But then he's very confused about why this person would choose for Tony to do his bidding to keep some kids from doing it, when in Steve's mind surely it'd be in whoever this is's best interest to keep them both working. Maybe that's what the time limit is about - it's supposed to make Tony antsier. And not thinking straight.

"And if you really thought you did then you'd do what I'm asking and get some rest." And some therapy, but that's really in short supply at the moment whereas sleep is free and he hopes will help Tony organize his thoughts so that he can see what a strange little deal he's in and maybe get some perspective while he's at it, and at least stop thinking he's so alone.

That was a neat little trap to set. Tony went quickly from looking frustrated and imploring for Steve to understand that he wouldn't even be here, stuck in his dead city with a poor facsimile of his friend, if Tony had just fixed the problem years ago, to looking away and overwhelmed with a sharp breath held in his chest. If he was going to stop talking and making everything worse, if he really was trying to prove to Jon that he could listen, then Cap should have been who he was listening to. "Yeah, okay," he muttered, already trying to calculate how he was supposed to do that and what Wesker had told him. He really had wasted a lot of time.

Steve raises his eyebrows because he isn't expecting Tony to acquiesce to this, but he's not going to look his gift horse in the mouth when he knows the only thing in there is a whole army full of wild arguments.

"Great. Just upstairs, right? Or?" he doesn't know what Tony means that Jon doesn't want him around, but it'd be good to get him out of the lab and somewhere slightly more calm and slightly more soft. Maybe he can even agree to an actual meal not cobbled together by Steve and a shower.

But he'll take baby steps.

Tony must have been more frayed than he had realized if Steve thought he had to hold his hand, and he tried to carefully tuck away those edges to reassure Steve that he definitely could find his way to a real bed and wasn't going to stay in the shop. "Winghead, if you came all the way down here just to take me to bed, you should have led with that. Maybe lit a candle or two," he said, voice honey but chin lifted like it was a jab to make Steve flinch back. "I'll let you know if I get lost, you'll be the first person I call."

Yeah, he isn't used to this tango but he's quickly picking up on the steps enough not to tangle himself up. "What, coffee and homemade mozzarella not enough for you? We're a little short on candle wax, Ironface," he says, fondly, wrinkling his nose at the nickname. He'll workshop it.

He knows if he steps out that door that Tony's not actually going to go to sleep, but he'll send others down to check in on him. He'll also tell them not to inform Tony that he sent them, but he's pretty sure that it's all just a big production that they both see right through.

"I'll come back tomorrow," he promises.

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