revivalproject | You can't hide from your problems

Entry tags:

You can't hide from your problems | Calibrations

WHO: Billy Kaplan, OPEN
WHERE: Billy's Calibration Room
WHAT: Calibrations
WHEN: 3 June - 10 June
WARNINGS: Potential Warnings for Violence, Depression, Death and Suicide, but also some happy things

The room you step into isn't all that different from Billy's actually room back home, for those that know it. It looks like the room of a typical nerdy teenager, walls adorned with posters of his favourite heroes, and a desk cluttered with unfinished homework. There's shelves with books, and assorted action figures, as well as a few old games- like operation, which don't seem to have gotten much attention lately, covered in a layer of dust.

Billy lays on his bed with an assortment of comics, reading through them, though when he glances up you might note that his eyes are wrong. All black with fields of stars, like you can see the depths of universe in them.

He curls a finger, and a box beneath the bed scoots further back into the darkness.

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That drew a look of surprise. "...You do?" Some how, at least in that moment, Billy had gotten it worked out in his head that he must be the only person to fell those things. That the Avengers never struggled over those decisions, never felt those urges, that he was somehow alone and wrong. Just knowing he wasn't the only one to feel those things, it lifted a weight from his shoulders.

"I've never...meant it like that before. It scared me..."

"It's hard not to get...frustrated," Tony said, backing away and pushing his hands through his hair to hook them over his neck. Cap wouldn't have liked Tony telling any of these kids this, he would rather they were shielded from all of the trauma of being an Avenger, but the trauma had happened and Cap was obviously still just trying to keep them in his base where he pretended he wasn't the worst offender of completely losing his temper. If Tony didn't feel like he could talk about this stuff with Cap, he had no idea who there was to coach the Young Avengers through the snarl. One of them was going to kill someone, intentionally or by accident, and it was going to be bigger than any of them, Tony had already seen that coming down the pipe from a mile away. "Not just in the heat of the moment, but, you know, I don't know which is worse," he continued, looking sidelong at a Hulk toy tucked among Billy's action figures. "Sometimes it's just the easiest answer, this guy is going to keep coming back and hurting people unless there's a solution to put an end to it. The longer it goes on, the more it becomes obvious that it's your fault-- if you had just done something, these ten people wouldn't be dead now." He didn't really miss Maria, come to think of it. She had a knack for making him feel awful. "And you really have to work to walk back from it, come up with a different answer, and for a long time it's still there in your head."

As much as it might not be the poster answer that Cap would want to push, it was the answer Billy really needed. That reassurance that it wasn't all effortless righteousness. These things stuck with you, and sometimes there was no good choice.

"Does it get any easier?" he asked, eyeing that figure in turn and frowning faintly.

That question was vague enough for Tony to drop his hands to his hips and frown at Billy before he asked, "What? Living with those thoughts?" That wasn't the part of this discussion that Tony could help him with. He started his life as a murderer; he was doing his work to make up for it. Every time he went back to being that person, and it was too often, it got harder to look at himself in the mirror.

"...Yeah. All of it. I tried to quit. I didn't think I could handle being responsible for that stuff anymore, but...I want to help people. I do. I just- ...I'm afraid if I can't handle it I'll end up-...I'm afraid of ending up like her," he admitted reluctantly.

Tony mumbled, "Oh," not any more thrilled to find out the question was deliberately vague and not specifically about the blood. He was better equipped to provide a more useful answer for Billy to that question, but it wasn't a pleasant one.

At least the context of Billy's anxiety let Tony compartmentalize it. His hands jumped up to wave off that line of thought, a deeply flawed hypothesis, before curling one into his shirt over his heart. "Nothing that happened at the Mansion was because the Scarlet Witch couldn't handle it," he declared first, a hard edge in his voice and the cold look he levelled on Billy warning him not to try that connection again. It softened as he continued, "If you just wanted to help people, you'd volunteer at a soup kitchen or be a Big Brother. Hell-- I don't get your magic, but I don't know what's stopping you from solving world hunger or fixing the foster system. Don't take that the wrong way, I'm saying that because I know that's not enough, I do the volunteering, I invest in medical research, I sponsor the shelters and I'm still out there in the tin can. It's not enough." He tapped his heart, where that agony twisted no matter how many hungry babies he held the bottle for. "I can offer more than that. I owe it to the future that I know is possible to put everything I can into it. Do you think what happened to Wanda is bad enough that she shouldn't have been an Avenger?"

"No- I know- I don't- ... I don't blame her. And I know it's hypocritical. But- I'm still scared...having the power to just...change everything...I don't want to hurt people, but if I ever did want to...even for a moment...I could break the world. And that's...terrifying," he tried to explain.

"And...people still look at me like they see her. Like they're afraid I'll-...wipe them out with a word."

"If you have the power to help people, then you have the power to hurt them," Tony said, hand out flat; that was standard, not a Billy problem. "You don't get one or the other." Maybe it wasn't the same, Tony wasn't a mutant and could drink enough to soak his brain into submission, but he didn't ask to be born the way he was, either, and those circumstances were the deadly combination that left him in the position to be able to blow up the planet if he wanted to, too. He was on track to do it for most of his life.

"Who's looking at you that way?" he asked.

"...I dunno. Logan...other mutants mostly? Sometimes they're more open about it, sometimes it's just...a feeling I get. I don't know if I blame them." He didn't talk about this kind of thing a lot. It felt...good not to keep it bottled inside.

"Logan's like that with everybody," Tony pointed out, though he knew the distinct animosity toward Wanda was hard to miss--it was a little muddier if Billy only thought it was transferring to him because of the powers. "He was ready to kick my ass for being late to a call."

Feeling exhausted and responsible for this kid's self-esteem because he was too powerful suddenly, Tony sighed and dropped back onto the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched and gripping the mattress. "Most people aren't going to like you," he said. "Not in this job. And they'll hate you enough to summon a demon or build a bomb in their basement just to take you out." Tony shrugged, that was just part of the job. "And most of the time, you'll deserve it," he finished, looking to Billy with the question in the angle of his head. Was that what this was really about?

"He was ready to literally gut me," Billy countered, but he nodded, knowing it was a complicated issue.

He frowned, and naturally that wasn't what the optimistic part of him wanted to hear, but it definitely resonated with whatever it was Billy was trying to figure out. "...Wow. I uh...I didn't mean for this all to get so serious. I'm sorry."

"Don't get kidnapped by these freakshows then," Tony admonished, waving his hand vaguely back in the direction that the Warden had been standing in front of them and frowning at Billy, duh, easy solution.

"You know, I always heard you were a genius, but I've never quite seen it in action until today," he teased fondly, and he blinked a few times, eyes returning to their more human state.

Tony grinned with a pompous lift of his chin like he was going to take that as a compliment, face value, only to bite his lip with a determined wrinkle of his nose to pinch Billy's side for the insult. "I'm the smartest person you know," he corrected, only to quickly ask, "Have you met Reed?," and wave it away with a confident nod even as he did, concluding again, "Smartest person you know."

Billy flinched away with a smile. "You're up there," he agreed with a teasing smirk, neither confirming nor denying his actual place on that list. "...I'm glad you're here Tony. In a selfish kind of way."

That was dangerous territory, making Tony's smile go brittle as he cocked his head, tongue between his teeth to keep from arguing with Billy while he was already vulnerable. There were plenty of people that happened to be here that Billy could be selfishly glad for, a luxury that no one else seemed to enjoy. "Who wouldn't be? I mean, please," he said instead, giving the place he had pinched Billy a pat instead as he gestured grandly down his chest, hot property, problem solver. The less cynical part of him was glad Billy was here, too, but Billy had already gotten that out of Tony once, repeat instances cost double. "Is that your way of keeping me in your bed, or should I go?" he offered with a gesture toward the door.

He laughed and gave the Avenger a shove. "Yeah, I don't think Teddy would like that," he countered. "You can stay if you want, but...I'm okay now. If you wanna go," he clarified, sure that was the main reason Tony felt compelled to hang around.

Tony bit his lip like he was skeptical of this story, but wasn't sure how much else he could really learn from this room. Everything he had seen had too many distracting elements; where the other Avengers were, who was alive, what caused them to react to Billy and his team the way they did and what exactly the Young Avengers were doing to get anyone else's attention. At the end of the day, Billy was full of the same shame and fears that Wanda was when she first joined the team a lifetime ago, and they might have turned out to be warranted, but somewhere in between, she was leading the Avengers, too.

Giving Billy's head a last, rough pat of farewell, Tony rolled up to his feet to head for the door. "You tell anyone I was nice to you for free, know that I have eight satellites tracking you at all times," he said as he slipped out of the room.

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You can't hide from your problems | Calibrations

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