revivalproject

Entry tags:

Outage

WHO: Tony and fellow 10s exclusively.
WHERE: Heading to the power plant, open to suggestions
WHAT: Tony gets into the civil engineering game, for his own purposes. He has disrupted the grid. Sorry.
WHEN: Now? Whenever you're ready?
WARNINGS: Thread is horny.
SOME NOTES: This is a blackout that I didn't really intend to last very long, but that's up to you. If you want to use it to do some power outage shenanigans, let me and/or Hux know and we'll stay distracted from fixing the problem.

network
[Shortly after all of the power seems to cut abruptly, whether or not anyone noticed or were peacefully asleep in the dark, absolutely everyone receives a direct, private text message at the same time.]
I will fix it. Not a problem.

problem solving
It was inevitable that this would become a problem, but Tony didn't anticipate it happening this fast. There was a whole city out there that, presumably, had been run on this very same grid when fully populated. How was he supposed to know that the entire alien power load was only built to anticipate a single Gamecube and a dinky water display? D.A.T.A. was still smoking in the dark from the surge when Tony wandered dejectedly back into the workshop, no luck fixing the outage locally-- this wasn't a fuse problem. It was everyone's problem.

At least one thing was obviously not part of the same grid; the network hadn't gone down for Tony, and while that was further bad news in the long run, he could take the blessing to try to address the issue before anyone got hysterical about it. He sent out the mass text as he tore the data spheres down from their suspension and meticulously worked in the low light from the simmering forge to feel for the heat and melted warp, and gut the most damaged pieces, leaving them spread blindly on the workbench. That was really going to fuck up his schedule.

He knew where the power plant was, kind of, in theory, and it wasn't a trek he was eager to take without the full light of day on his side, but it wasn't like he was getting anything else done here. It would be faster than it looked, he could run, there was probably a generator up there and the way was going to be brightly lit and not an dark, creepy forest at all. Deep breath. Tony grabbed his jacket and his tool belt and started across town.

Elsewhere, the hum of power had gone silent, lights winked out, and the steady bubbling of the fountain at the centre of the city murmured to a stop, until the surface of the water was still as glass.

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The kisses and little measures of affection are making it harder and harder to focus. And with each it grows more tempting to just... let the discussion go. To pull Tony against him and kiss the man soundly and keep him distracted for the rest of the night cycle. Sure, that's an insane number of hours when you lived in a sixty hour day, but he liked to think he could manage.

"Heat, the constant source of combat for us engineers," Reeve sighs.

And he finally makes a decision, leaning forward to press a light kiss to Tony's lips. Light because he doesn't know if he dares for something deeper. What if it was rebuffed? What if Tony was just affectionate after getting off? He didn't know. Minerva, this was complicated.

"Mako is..."

How did he explain Mako? From his understanding and interactions with other people from Earth... They never understood. So he reaches for one of Tony's arms and takes it from around his neck. With it freed he twists it so the wrist is against his lips, and he lets his lips press over the point of Tony's pulse.

"Mako is like blood. The very lifeblood of the planet."

And this, he expects, is where he'll lose Tony's attention. The man was clearly disdainful of 'magic' and others before had treated the idea of the Lifestream as akin to it.

Mako... was his greatest sin.

Tony didn't understand either, the easy corollary to oil or natural gas that Reeve had sketched for him falling apart with that simile, the words feeling weighted by Reeve's careful kiss and the way he took Tony's hand. If anything, it already sounded like sunlight to Tony, a constant energy source that the vitality of the whole planet depended on. That didn't explain the strange melancholy of Reeve's delivery. Tony slid his wrist from Reeve's hold to brush a thumb over his lips, quieting whatever concerns were making him hold back, then cradle his cheek against his palm to keep him from talking for more than one second so Tony could draw him into a proper kiss, only relaxing and folding his arm back around Reeve's neck with a sigh when he acquiesced to the probing curl of Tony's tongue. Tony slouched back down then to where he started, dropping his ear toward his shoulder and breath a cool stream against Reeve's neck above the warm pool as he asked again, "So, what's mako?" The naive question would have been, if he knew how to harness that, and the planet depended on it, wasn't there any on Agra 10 that he could be using?

Tenderness does not make him feel any less apprehensive. But he does give himself to the kiss, the momentary bliss of yielding and letting Tony take charge. To take the weight of the situation from him for a moment.

But to find and use mako energy here would defeat their very purpose on this world.

“I am not being metaphorical when I call mako the blood of the planet. Tell me, Tony, do you believe in the soul? In rebirth? For on Gaia such things are real, and from what I have heard from some people of Earth, these may not be true in your world.”

What was or wasn't true in his world was a more complicated question than what Tony believed. Either way, he wasn't enthusiastic about the build up-- he had already heard plenty about souls from Reeve, and it hadn't made him any more confident that he would call whatever gave Mini-C his life a soul, never mind any of the rest of them or a whole planet. He let his arm drop slowly into the water to push his hand against Reeve's chest, where he could feel the very real mechanism that kept him alive, before allowing, "Some people believe in that. A lot of people," because Reeve was trying to answer his question and Tony didn't have to shut him down immediately just because he wasn't a believer; he understood the concept, he was still on board. "You could say a lot has been created on the power of that belief." However much Tony believed didn't leave him wondering any less about his own soul, anyway.

“Belief doesn’t factor in to how my world and the Lifestream work. I known I didn’t believe it when I was younger either. The Lifestream was silly superstition in my mind. I’m a man of science, of math, to believe in something I can’t see...”

His eyes move past Tony, settling instead on the glowing moss and mushrooms on and around the stones. And his hand settles over Tony’s in the water, holding it against his skin, wishing he could feel the same pulse Tony could feel.

“I’ve seen it, though. Minerva, how does one explain it?”

With that he sighs and tilts his head back to look up at the ceiling of the cavern.

“All life in my world is connected. Every plant and animal and monster and person. Even, supposedly, the stones themselves. All life comes from the Lifestream, and when a life passes, it returns to the Lifestream. All are connected, as part of the Planet, living and breathing and knowing itself. When we die, we too return to the Lifestream, to be born again in another form. But the Lifestream isn’t a metaphor, it isn’t just a cycle. It’s a thing. A liquid. It can bubble up naturally from the world in founts and springs, creating natural materia. They’re crystals containing the overflowing memories of some other life, and it is through them that we use most magics. And... if properly distilled and refined, mako can be burned. Mako energy consumes the very life of the planet.”

When he put it like that, it was so obviously disrespectful of the dead, like burning corpses for fuel, making Tony lift his head to give Reeve a skeptical look, clearly thinking at least some part of what Reeve was telling him had to be either bullshit or so culturally far removed from what Tony understood that Reeve had to have been lying in some way about himself this whole time-- Tony had been under the impression that they shared enough similarities that he wasn't about to be blindsided by something like cannibalism. The further connection to oil wasn't lost on Tony, but Reeve made it sound much more personal and careless; there wasn't a cycle of life anyone was burning out of some old dinosaur bones for a Formula 1 Grand Prix, they weren't coming back either way. And that Reeve had at some point thought it was superstition, only to come to this conclusion with further information-- the skeptical look incrementally softened, leaving Tony watching Reeve with his coldly intense stare.

"This isn't common knowledge," he concluded, the only logical way for Tony to interpret how a culture could believe in this Lifestream and also burn it for energy. No wonder Reeve was looking for an alternative, a little climate crisis suddenly felt morally manageable.

There was a reason he hadn’t really wanted to talk about it. Because who would want to associate with Reeve after learning this about him? About his world?

“Not, it wasn’t. Not until recently. About five years ago the company I worked for, Shinra Electric Company, it started getting some trouble from an eco-terrorist group called Avalanche. They insisted Shinra was not only evil, but they were killing the planet. They based it on an ancient religion of a long dead people. Or a people that were thought to be dead. It was...”

Reeve sighs.

“We haven’t used mako energy in more than two years. It is forbidden by all nations. We did so much damage. Because it all sounded so impossible. A whole world largely dependent on the polluting clouds of burnt mako, losing that power nearly overnight. It was necessary. And horrid. And all my fault.”

His hand briefly squeezed Tony’s before releasing it. This was when a sensible person would walk away.

“I’ve dedicated my every waking hour, since I knew it really was the truth, trying to bring Shinra down while still protecting innocent people. Every waking hour since the Lifestream rose up from the ground to protect us when we didn’t deserve it, every hour trying to rebuild my world. To make up for my sins.”

He shakes his head.

“Can you ever redeem yourself from such a thing?”

The skeptical look returned as Reeve claimed the responsibility for-- either using the mako, or the fallout from halting the practice, it wasn't immediately clear, but Tony was definitely missing a crucial connection that put Reeve at fault, leaving him not retreating but rubbing a soothing hand over Reeve's chest as it was released before locking his arm securely behind Reeve again, holding his elbows on the mossy lip of the pool. Just as before, the skepticism slowly softened as Reeve continued, the language foreign but the refrain familiar enough that Tony recognized the song, leaving him looking apologetic by the time he took a breath to try to answer Reeve's question. It wasn't going to be a reassuring answer, not if he wanted the truth.

"You can keep trying," was Tony's best answer, with a clearly practiced smile that faded to leave him blinking quickly, trailing off with a sniff and a shrug as his gaze shifted down to the ripple of the water between them, "But..." Whatever Reeve thought he had to fight that hard for, it was going to be working its way into his heart for the rest of his life. "Believe in the future," he suggested, "It's going to be beautiful." He met Reeve's eye again with confidence, picking up one hand behind him to curl through the hair at the back of his neck. "We're going to make sure of it."

"You've a way with words," Reeve can't help but say after Tony speaks. How was it possible that the man could move closer to him, could hold him? Ah, but Reeve hadn't said it all, had he? That said... he accepted the comfort offered. Even if there was little chance Tony could help with it.

"This place, and the last one... they feel almost like a penance. It's like being home. A ruined world, a destroyed metropolis, and this at least is training wheels. I don't have to reinvent power as we know it. I know... I know on some level that coal and oil are going to be bad for everyone. I've seen the studies. It's all a mess. And our world advanced so greatly thanks to mako-energy, which I'm not trying to apologize for. But..."

The blood of the planet on his hands.

"Before me, mako was used, yes. But never in the quanta it was after... Well, mako reactors were only what they were because of me."

If it wasn't for the warm pool, Tony would have shuddered again at the image Reeve offered of the home he had left behind, his skin feeling clammy instead at the idea of New York in ruins so much like Temba, a persistent enough nightmare in this awful, empty city. Tony's hand was already in Reeve's hair, leaving him unsure of what else to offer, knowing that dread he felt at the mere idea couldn't compare to actually seeing his city in ruins like that and without the language to offer his support. At least he knew he could offer some plans, if it was possible for Reeve to take the knowledge back with him, of a repulsor energy reactor system to help Reeve's rebuilding process.

More immediately, there was something he could relate to and offer at least some commiseration, if Tony was willing to share it. He started with a grimace, then unwound his arms from around Reeve to spread along the edge of the pool behind him as he moved his back against the rocks instead. There was that annoying, exhausting thing again, where he had to put his life into his own words instead of trusting anyone who knew his name to already have an opinion about him, letting them think he was a monster as long as he didn't have to directly confront it. "I made weapons," he managed eventually, mouth twisting in a wry smile that didn't reach his eyes, and hand up, there it was, it was just a fact. "I was--I am really good at it, and I made an absurd amount of money doing it, and I didn't think that hard about where the money was coming from. I don't know how many people died, they continue to die, because of me and how efficient I made the act of murdering...thousands of them." He had to stop, staring at the water again, his focus distant until he dragged his head up to offer Reeve that false smile again. "When I realized what I was doing, what kind of person I was, I knew there was no fixing the damage or bringing any of those people back, but I could try to be better, and I could make sure I was there to stop it from happening again. I should have died. I should have gone to prison. But I didn't, so I can use the time I have instead. I know there's no forgiveness, but there are people who want to help you do good, and I hope you can love them even if you can't love yourself."

The ruins are a lot worse when you had designed the city. When you'd seen it used as a weapon against its own people. But no. He couldn't think of that right now.

When Tony pulls away he isn't surprised, he had expected it after all. But the words, as they tumble free. Those shock him. Tony Stark, who seemed a nice man. Tony Stark who was working so hard to help people here... Tony Stark, who was more like Reeve than Reeve could fathom.

"Scarlett ran weapons development for Shinra. She had no conscience at all. So you at least beat out our equivalent there, I think. Though I'll give her that I think she probably looked better in a tight red dress than you would. Not that I'm saying you couldn't pull it off."

They're both so caught up in it now. When it's just himself, Reeve can accept falling into brooding. But he supposed it was foolish. When Vincent Valentine, the king of brooding, told him to stop it and keep moving, he should have listened. So instead he moves to take the position Tony had earlier. Or near enough. He moves closer to the other man, leaning in to press a light kiss against his jar, not caring about the rough brush of a beard against his lips.

"Honestly, I understand the feeling. I should be dead. I should be jailed. Instead I'm called a hero, for the things I did in my world to save it from ending. But the weight doesn't go away. All you can hope to do is wear it down, right? Live a little more each day?"

Well, there's one thing they have gone for them, isn't there?

"Looks like there are plenty of hours in any given day here for us to do good. To use the time."

Reeve could have easily decided that Tony was toxic, that weapons manufacturing was a step too far, or that getting too close meant their vilest traits that led to this weight they both carried could only feed off of each other or, worse, meant he would have to forgive himself. Tony's smile was small and brief, but much more genuine as his eyes closed with the press of Reeve's lips, tipping his head into the affection. He wasn't sure if he could agree to any of the weight ever wearing down, or that living ever got any easier, but it was a relief to share it with someone every once in a while. "Red is my colour," he argued with a chuckle.

He really wasn't sure that he agreed the hours they had here meant anything. To the people here, sure, if Tony could bring them some comfort or hope for the future, even if that meant an occasional blackout, he was more than happy to solve the problem. What good that meant for their lives back in their home worlds wasn't as obvious. To that, he sighed, slouching down into the pool with his arms falling from where he held himself up on the rocks, until he had to hold his breath and was peering up at Reeve through damp lashes just over the surface of the water. He snuck his arms around Reeve's waist to pull his heart into a kiss, the one good thing Tony thought he might carry back home with him.

“I don’t know... I think more natural colors suits you very well.”

Is that a pointed comment, made with his hands skimming over Tony’s skin? Absolutely. Tony looked best like this. Strong of body and gentle of heart. Or at least gentle enough to provide comfort.

“And I must say, you know how to make your company feel welcomed. I wish I’d lured you down here with me before.”

The tension relief had been amazing. And now he just wanted to float away in the warmth.

As for the kiss, well, he sighs contentedly at the touch of it. Was it possible for so simple a contact to be fortifying? For a touch to be nourishing? He felt like he could melt away into it, and for the moment he let himself revel in the sensation. Chances were it would not be repeated past this one stolen evening, for all the flirtation. He was used to a lack of hope in these things. Beyond people disappearing ‘home’ and plans diverting, he had learned to embrace what he could hold while he could have it.

“Hmmmm,” he sighed after a long moment. “Back on Risa, should I should have tried a line about hot springs. Clearly it works.”

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Outage

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