revivalproject | (no subject)

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WHO: Tony and...open? Look, I do see those other two open waterworld posts down there, I just didn't want to get this all over them.
WHERE: Tarf system! I'm assuming Keith would put the Bloodsport on waterworld, too.
WHAT: Mini-event, mega-breakdown! Tony is feeling sorry for himself, so he makes use of the local delicacies.
WHEN: During the pit-stop event.
WARNINGS: First of all, I'm sorry. Second, mind the alcoholism and a relapse situation, it's a little dark in here.

The thing was, it really didn't matter.

If someone asked Tony what he thought they were doing here, he didn't have a good answer for them, except that maybe some people were here as a mercy, away from a planet or dimension that was strangling them and they were barely on their toes. It didn't matter what he was doing here, because some kind of mistake had been made along the way, obviously, and the entities in charge of making these decisions had made a severe miscalculation of his worth to this group that they were gathering. If it mattered at all, he was the rope.

The thing was, he wasn't really accomplishing anything anyway. The most material production he could claim was a few bullets, ever the weaponeer under the slightest bit of pressure, born out of a problem of his own making and a total lack of resolve for the slightest moral engagement. It was even worse knowing from Reeve that he should have been capable of being better than that. If he was worth anything, it was supposed to be that he was smart enough to be better than that. He hadn't really been from the start; making weapons was what he was best at, and what he always did, and the jewel in his bloody crown was the repulsor that he pretended was a clean energy system until that slight pressure.

And the thing was, Tony was the only one really pretending otherwise. Steve knew well enough to get out when he had the chance, that he wasn't really happy in the world Tony was building for him, and none of Tony's glittering visions of the future were ever going to be realized while he suffocated them under his control. Tony had maybe a few more months, back home. He knew what was coming, he always did. The dazzle of Tony's manipulation was going to wear off quick without the support of the Illuminati, and he was going to be standing alone trying to convince Steve that the whole world saw them as weapons.

That's the thing, the real thing boring a void through Tony's chest that he thought he could slap some duct tape on and ride out until something else could take him out first. Everyone figured it out eventually, that they were better off keeping their distance. Jon was smart, and bore the vastness of the present the same way Tony adopted the eternity of the future. The dazzle shouldn't have worked as long as it did. Reeve had done him one better and figured it out for him, knew there was only one place that path led, and Tony still dragged him back down it with a razor smile. Sansa was mourning, for god's sake. Maybe he did it on purpose. Nothing obsessed Tony and made that void grow sick on its own emptiness like the vulnerable flutter of his scarred heart at the sound of Jon's compelling voice.

The thing was, if Hellrung was here to say any of this to, he would recite the Prayer at Tony and Tony wouldn't be able to tell him if it was the serenity, the courage or the wisdom he intended to find in this bottle. It was just the first of several that Tony had slowly accumulated, not intentionally at first. Space, the ships, the whole new planets, that all should have been thrilling his heart to bursting, and he bounced down onto the sand fully intending to make good use of his sunglasses and at least pretend at what he was supposed to be doing. He knew Jon wasn't handling the ships well, and maybe if Tony found something here that would make the trip easier, maybe Jon would accept it and talk to him again. The natives were more than happy to watch Tony rehang a door that was slowly slouching out of its frame, then laugh at the face he made at a whiff of the leather and offer a drink instead. Good stuff, they said, takes the sting right out of the nostrils, and maybe out of being cramped in a spaceship that wasn't easy on the nerves. He came back for another, this time coaxing a winch back into repair that had snapped and left a net of still flapping fish on the dock as he worked, after he couldn't bring himself to go looking for Jon with just one bottle in hand. This wasn't a one bottle problem he had caused.

His fingers were pricked with splinters and his toolbelt notably lighter by the time Tony reclined on the sand with half a dozen bottles propped up in it next to him, holding one up to the sunlight curiously to watch the liquid refract inside.

The thing was, it didn't really matter what he did now. It wasn't going to change anything.

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There wasn't nearly enough alcohol on this beach to help absorb all of this information, starting with that weird scoff at the Tower offer. Tony thought the place was pretty nice, thank you. Maybe it was just that Tommy didn't like the idea of living with Wolverine because he apparently had some strong feelings about the guy. That was fair, Logan did have a certain scent about him, but there was no reason to be making such rude accusations about Tony's team and Tony pouted defensively.

It was Tommy's charming abstract of how he perceived the 'root of the problem' that turned that pout into a more verbal, "Hey, what the fuck...?", lip raised in a grimace until he sighed with resignation and lolled back onto his elbows with his head on his shoulder. His gaze only very slowly made its way back in Tommy's direction as that little rant continued, eyebrow raised dubiously, catching on pretty early that the problem Tommy thought he was working through right now was not Tony's at all. It wasn't going to help right now to correct him and let him know that he got this theory backwards and Tony didn't really think anyone had ever let him down. Just about everyone he knew, Tony thought, was pretty remarkable.

Even worse, enough so that Tony did have to step in with this one, Tommy was so committed to his self-resentment loop that Tony had to try to cut in, "You saved my life, I just clocked your brother in the face," which might not have been how he would have phrased it if he had waited a split second longer to find out the kid was suicidal. Of course he was, no wonder that conversation in his head was so draining, and Tony tipped his head back then with his eyes closed in frustration, not sure why Tommy made this revelation sound like some kind of sick gotcha. Great, he was so focused on his own suicidal ideation that he couldn't see someone else's right in front of him, sick burn, Tommy, what was that about the root of the problem? Tony was going to have to try to talk to Billy again, what a nightmare, but if Billy had been that close before, that meant it was a choice he had to make every day, like what to have for breakfast. Tony knew that intimately.

With his weight incrementally working back, Tony finally gave in and flopped down onto his back in the sand, like the weight of everything Tommy kept saying had pushed him down. Right, Cassie was dead. Tony still didn't really think of her that way; knowing the fact in the abstract made it so intangible and knocked the air out of him all over again. When it finally seemed like he could get a word in edgewise, Tony pointed out, "You sure do talk a lot. What's that like?," mostly up at the sky so Tommy didn't take it as an actual invitation to go on another tirade. He had to actually listen for a second longer because Tony wanted to let him know, "You haven't let me down, Tommy." He rolled his head in the sand to try to squint up at the kid. "I don't know about those other kids, that seems complicated, as far as I knew one of you was a robot and Cassie was alive. I don't know. But you couldn't let me down. You're an Avenger, and not just that, you're an Avenger because there weren't any and you thought, someone better do that. Do you know how amazing that is?" Without a good way to express himself without feeling like he was going to be sick, Tony raised a hand out of the sand to wave like he was coaxing what he meant to say out of the air, then patted it against his heart, tsp tap tap, whatever that was was in there.

Mostly Tommy's disdain was based entirely in the fact that no one would let him in the tower. Not really. Too much hatred of Pietro, of Wanda, of Magneto. It's just not going to happen. Not now, not ever.

But what really gets Tommy to be serious, to look at Stark like he's a literal idiot, is when Tony claims the wrong order of who saved who.

"Punching Billy saved my life. He was literally going to kill me. I know him. I was fucked until you showed up. I didn't save you though. Billy did kill you. I just... got him to focus enough to fix it."

And the idea that Tommy is an Avenger because 'there weren't any and you thought someone better do that' actually makes him laugh. Openly. Loudly. That was how the Young Avengers formed, yes. That was why Billy deserved to be called an Avenger. Tommy? He had been brought in when Teddy was kidnapped and the reformed Avengers didn't seem equipped to deal with it. And Tommy joined because it was either that or... Juvie.

"You give me Billy's credit. Don't do that. And... I hate silence. Silence reminds me of Juvie."

So does screaming. But one of those he can control.

It was possible that Billy was about to put an end to Tommy, sure, hard to say, and it was possible that Tommy couldn't have gotten out of it without some surprise intervention, debatable, but Tony did have to stop his reluctant deliberating with his head tilting to either side in the sand to argue with confidence, "Way I hear it, that part was Jon." Tony wasn't exactly present for the details, so maybe his version of events was misguided, but it sounded to him like Tommy did most of the resuscitating. It was very much a team effort; even in death, Tony was a lot to handle for one person.

The laugh was unsettling enough that Tony didn't try to mirror it, frowning up at Tommy instead with his fingers curling more uncertainly where they had landed in the front of his shirt. Between that and the Tower thing, Tony had to conclude, "Do you not want to be an Avenger?" This was practically unthinkable, and probably wouldn't have even made it to any conscious part of Tony's brain without the alcohol making thoughts slippery enough to migrate. 'Once an Avenger, always an Avengers' could possibly not be positive for everyone that heard it.

Tony didn't get it. Tommy had looked into his brother's eyes and seen his ending. And Tommy's 'resuscitating' had just been useless CPR until he got his brother to do something. Had begged.

But he's done arguing the death point. Instead he shakes his head at the question.

"My mother altered the universe and wiped out Avengers and a lot of mutantkind. My Uncle caused her to do it, stole the Inhuman Terragen Crystals, kidnapped my cousin, and was all around a miserable asshole. Who, shortly after retaining his powers, was possessed by Chthon and nearly destroyed the world. Again. My Maternal Grandfather is the mutant terrorist Magneto. My Paternal Grandfather is Ultron. And I'm just a speedster, which means I'm a dime a dozen. Not even the fastest. No one is inviting me. I get the Young Avenger title because technically no Avenger can tell our team what to do."

No one wanted him. When the Young Avengers had disbanded no one had offered their hand out to Tommy. There hadn't been a 'we could use you here, kid'. He'd been left to his own devices, miserable and isolated and dying a little more each day, even if a solo speedster was a powerful fucking force for good in the world.

Something about getting Tommy alone drained him of all of his bravado, leaving Tony exhausted with all of the desperate ways Tommy related to the world that Tony rarely considered. He wasn't wrong, factually, but Tommy's designs only seemed to go as far as bleakly unforgiving, and Tony wasn't sure if he was supposed to try to defend his teammates, or assure Tommy that his value was entirely divorced from all of that baggage--hanging onto a detail like being tangentially related to a rogue AI that he had never even met, as far as Tony knew, was a level of self-flagellation that read more as indulgence.

"Believe me, if I wanted to tell you what to do, you wouldn't be able to argue with me," Tony started, because he might have been basically immobile with alcohol on a completely alien beach in a foreign timestream, but that didn't mean Tommy had any business forgetting who he was talking to. The Sentry lived in Tony's house because Tony had the killswitch. This reminder was only half way a threat, just as much to tell Tommy he, and the rest of his team, was very much an Avenger by consensus, and he should probably continue to not trust Iron Man, like Tony thought this conversation was about. "The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are still Avengers. I'm an Avenger. I never got an invitation, I had to do it myself, nobody else pays membership dues. You want to talk about baggage, Hawkeye tried to kill me personally more than once, just because he wanted to, and he didn't even have superpowers, he could barely feed himself, he was one of the best of us. I don't see your point. You're being an asshole."

Yeah, Tommy doesn't buy that. Wanda and Pietro might be Avengers on paper, Pietro might have taught at the Avengers Academy, there may have been stuff that happened, but that didn't mean they were still considered Avengers. Not among the people who mattered.

"Well, you are a punk, and he is Hawkeye. That's why I stand for the smart Hawkeye."

Which one was it? Tony dropped both hands back into the sand heavily with defeat and muttered, "Fine, you don't have to be an Avenger. I absolve you of your sins." Belatedly, he raised a hand again to do a mimicry of a sign of a cross, with a flick of his wrist, or whatever, for this sanction he had delivered.

"I want to be. But that doesn't mean anyone wants me to be. Or for me to be around," Tommy sighs. "It's an issue. Avengers are judgy bitches."

"Are you talking about your team now, or...?" Tony had to ask, looking up Tommy's way again in confusion. The Avengers had been called plenty of cutting names, mostly because of Tony, but he hadn't heard 'judgy bitches' before.

"Not just my team," Tommy answers. But he's used to the adults being assholes. He stands and starts to gather bottles at last.

"I can distribute these between the ships. For emergencies."

That must have made Tommy at least an Avenger at heart, because he was doing a lot of judgy bitching. Tony heaved another sigh, then pushed himself up on one hand to complain, "No-- c'mon, man." If those ended up in other ships and Tony couldn't charm his way onto them, he was going to have to start doing some truly degrading jobs to restock for the journey ahead. "I'm already tired, you're exhausting," he whined.

"Yeah. I am. Because you're a snail, and you can't keep up," Tommy answers. "But I'm here to help."

You need to just accept the fact that you can't be drunk all the time, Tony.

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