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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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That many bottles means something's wrong. Sansa hadn't known Tyrion to drink during their marriage but before their marriage, he'd been legendary for it, and she's been around enough Lannisters to know when drinking is both for courage and to numb away feelings.

Since they're on a planet, she's in modern clothes - shorts and a tank top - and it's much easier to sink down on the sand beside him.

"Before you ask, he's with Steve. I have to pass my child around so everyone gets time with him. Good thing he is. You stink of alcohol. What has you in your cups, hmm?"

Catra didn't know nearly enough about Tony to worry about finding him on the beach with so many bottles, but she did know that was more than enough for one person, snatching one away to claim for herself with a smirk. He could afford to share and she didn't feel like doing chores to earn her own.

Her nose wrinkled at the strong smell of it, but she shrugged and drank it down regardless. "There's too much water on this stupid planet. Why'd we have to stop here?"

A shadow suddenly fell over him, and an oddly shaped one at that.

Here and there Raphael had caught a glimpse of the man busying himself with the locals. He'd seen him come from one of their ships to know he was part of their odd ensemble of supposed heroes.

The turtle had been doing his own end of bargaining and bartering. While he was no handyman, he could do a fair bit of heavy lifting, and one local had been very happy to have help in getting their stuck pet out of the top of a thirty-foot tree. What Raphael came back with was a slightly larger inventory that made him feel a lot better for at least some of the things he'd come without.

He'd been on his way back to the ship with his latest acquisition, a quiver of arrows (he could do without the quiver- seriously, what is that smell?!) and a bow, when he'd seen the figure splayed out on the beach. The glint of bottles surrounding the man had not gone amiss.

Jesus, Tony didn't even think about James. He was already 3/4 of a bottle deep on a predictable path, that baby didn't deserve that, no baby deserved to have that around, Sansa was right. Dad would have been proud. Tony only sniffed and tilted his head to watch Sansa out of the corner of his eye, squinting around his sunglasses, and eventually said, "You're going to get burnt. What are you wearing? Did you always have that?"

“I had these, yes. I don’t wear them normally but on a planet like this, one ought to show a little more of themselves in spirit of the ocean life.”

Sansa peers at him with concern and touches his shoulder lightly. “Why are you drinking so much, my darling? It isn’t good for you, you know, and if it were me doing this you’d be all over me for it.”

That wasn't an entirely satisfactory explanation to Tony for never having seen Sansa in something so confidently modern feeling, but it was still what might happen to a redhead's skin after being exposed to the sun for the first time in at least however many months Tony had known Sansa that was making him restless, already starting to shift in the sand and glance around for a solution. It hadn't occurred to him to bring along a hat. The touch to his shoulder stilled him immediately, and he breathed a laugh and tipped his head to the side until his cheek touched her knuckles at the diminutive, but he didn't really have a great answer for her. He knew he'd had plenty of reasons before he uncorked the bottle that were very convincing, but to Sansa he smiled, "In spirit of the ocean life." That was what you were supposed to do on the beach, get shitfaced.

Very slowly, not content with the stillness for any longer than that second, he rolled himself to the side, then carefully and surprisingly unsteadily to his feet, taking his time finding his balance with a noise of appreciation for how strong this stuff turned out to be now that he was more vertical. "I'll get back to you on the being all over you part, I've got a line for that, give me a minute," he promised, and promptly walked away. Once he found his equilibrium, it wasn't so bad, and he went crashing into the foliage a few feet away, searching noisily to emerge a few minutes later with a remarkably large leaf that made a disconcerting wobbling sound, like sheet metal in the wind. Flopping down again into his depression in the sand, he propped his find up on its branch where it shaded most of the sun at Sansa's back, and its complaining settled into an atonal humming in the breeze. Fixed.

That Catra was doing something mildly annoying and sticking her paws where they didn't belong was not enough of a surprise to get Tony to react, only watch with a weary sigh and slowly tightening frown before he complained, "Hey, okay." Barely shifting to raise his hand out of the sand, he quirked a finger for her to replace that bottle now, that was more than enough for someone her weight and already clearly stunted development, psychologically. "For the local culture," he did provide willingly. "Maybe if you participated a bit, you could sneak your own drinks like a proper teenager."

Flat on his back in the smooth sand, breathing in the ocean air and basking in the heat of the sun and practically meditative, at complete peace, basically a monk, this was an incredible idea, the unexpected intrusion of the shift of light through his eyelids made Tony's brow pinch in irritation. He was nirvanaing here. Reluctantly, he squinted one eye open to know who it was that had no respect for his enlightenment, then didn't move any further for a very long time. It was true that this was a difficultly reverse image to parse, and that Tony might have been dealing with some mild heatstroke and dehydration that had only a little bit to do with the alcohol, but there was no way he was looking at a big turtle.

Eventually, he tried to cock his head in the sand to get a better look at this intruder, twisting it to the side and not getting much better results. He had seen plenty of large lizards in his life, this could have been worse, surely there was a reasonable explanation for this apparition. "You're not what I think God would look like," he easily ruled out. That wasn't something he'd ever thought very hard about, but if pressed in this exact moment, if there was a God, Tony was sure it would be an atom. "Too big," he reported.

"...."

That had to be the strangest first reaction he'd ever had from anyone. His red bandanna bunched at the middle as his brow furrowed behind it, green eyes casting a dubious look at the man. Finally Raphael leaned back, still staring down at him.

"You're already marinated, I think it's time for you to flip over before you get well-done."

"Thank you for my parasol," Sansa says, giving him a brilliant smile in reward for his act of kindness. She's a little surprised he managed to do so, considering how many bottles were in the sand, and she trips her fingers up along his forearm before asking her question again.

"I know you have something to say about being all over me, darling, but I want to ask my question again. What has you in your cups, truly? Is it just being upon the beach? If it is, I would remind you that drinking to excess makes it difficult for men to enjoy themselves in bed."

By then, what Sansa might have meant about being all over her had totally escaped Tony, so he only nodded along and gladly basked in her smile, then slowly melted into her shade to rest his cheek on her bare shoulder, eyes closed against the glare of the sun. "I find it hard to believe that there is a man who found any moment with you difficult to enjoy," he said, which must have accounted for the smile in his voice when he asked, "Is that the name you landed on? It's not bad."

The turtle man may have been correct, but the turtle man had little respect for physics and not accounted for how difficult it was to move after being completely inert. Although Tony did make a valiant attempt to flip over, he got as far as lifting one shoulder then frowning, nope, not gonna happen, with a, "Hm," to explain the really very interesting science of it. "Aren't you supposed to be in the water?" he asked. The mysteries of the animal kingdom were not Tony's area. "Or is that tortoise-men? That's the difference, right? Turtle-tortoise. I heard, once, that tortoises are so delicious, it's illegal to eat them. That's why. Because they're amazing."

"I'm glad you don't hate it," Sansa says. She wraps one arm around him to keep him close while he's resting on her shoulder and uses the other to pet his hair a bit since she likes doing it and she's figured out that he likes when she does it.

"You'd really be in a bind if you hated it because I would just keep calling you darling anyway. I'm a queen, I can make those decisions."

Raphael watched the guy flop around half-heartedly like a dying fish, unimpressed.

"I've got better things to do than go for a swim. Also, I wouldn't try eating me even if I was a tortoise. Granted I don't slap the sunburn off of you, I'm sure it's a bad idea eating mutant turtle."

Folding his arms, he tilted his head at the upside-down man. "You gonna lie there and cook all day?"

That was nice. It didn't fix anything, far from it, in fact Tony should have been reminding Sansa that she had plenty of better places to be and other people to be calling sweet names, but he was rapidly running out of people to talk to and Sansa hadn't noticed how completely he fucked it up just yet. So it was nice, and Tony accepted her imperial decision with a short laugh, and tried very hard not to frown. After the ocean had crashed up onto the sand and taken a deep breath of its own, in the hangtime before the next wave came falling back toward them, Tony wondered, "How do you know you'll be happier here?" Sansa had told him, he thought, the first time they met-- that couldn't be right, that was fast--that she didn't plan to go back. She'd had time to think about it, obviously, but it still somehow surprised him that she had figured it out so soon. Her husband was there now, in theory. It couldn't be all bad.

"You're a mutant," Tony breathed, as though this were some obvious revelation, only to wince and offer, "Wow, sorry," because he couldn't imagine being born as a human boy and having that human boy childhood only to suddenly grow a shell. That must have been a real shock. It occurred to Tony that he should furnish the mutant with an answer eventually, and said, "You don't want to go for a swim with me? You kind of stink."

"Sorry for what? Considering eating me? The turtle soup threat's kinda old anyway."

Raphael shrugged, a brow hiking up again as the man spoke up again. "Says the guy that could peel paint with his breath," he noted flatly. "I'm sure you'd have a certain smell about you too if you hadda live in New York's sewers for sixteen years."

"I have my son here," Sansa says. It's an easy choice to know whether she wants to stay or go. At home, she doesn't have her son. The entire North can hang if it means trading her son for it; Sansa knows it will be waiting for her when she's lived her life here and she hopes James is old enough to understand when she inevitably gets taken from him.

"I'm safe from men here. I have my son. I have a family that I love here among all of you. I would never leave willingly."

Family, of course family, and Sansa said it with such conviction that she must have known what she was talking about. That must have been reassuring. There were people here and back home that Tony thought he loved deeply, but couldn't go for very long without a reminder that he had no idea what that really meant, and if that had anything to do with family. Dad never said he loved him, and they were family. What did that mean?

Sansa assertion that she was safe from men was misguided, so maybe all of it was. Tony swayed away from her then, putting his weight back on one hand behind himself, searching the sand for his open bottle with the other. "I have a daughter, you know. Not me--Steve said she's out there, in some other dimension. I'll never have her, I already fucked that up," he reported, and started to laugh like that was some kind of joke. Gone as quickly as it came, somberly again, Tony continued, "I feel like I would never give her up either. Isn't that sick? Obviously, it's not true, but I still have this feeling. There's something wrong with me. I won't let anyone make you leave."

"I wasn't going to eat you," Tony corrected graciously. "Darwin was. I think." That wasn't important, he was long gone and had no concept of homo superior, his vision of the future was pinprick narrow and Tony's was far too expansive. Tony frowned and gave another reluctant sniff to the air with mild disbelief.

"That's what that is?" he asked dubiously, because he had spent more than his fair share of time in sewers and they didn't really smell like that. That was more of the rotting feet smell of what the locals seemed to think was a perfectly respectful way to present their wares. "You've been shopping," he corrected.

"To want to be a father - to yearn for a child that another version of you has - that isn't sick, Tony. That's the natural feeling of a man, I think. You adore my son. It's clear you care for children. Why wouldn't you want to have this daughter and feel heartsick that you can't?"

Sansa reaches across him to touch his hand, trying to stay him from drinking from the bottle again. Perhaps it won't work but she feels the need to give it a proper try, anyway.

"Wanting to be a good father to your child is a wonderful thing, not a sick one. Men in Westeros don't really care about raising children, only that their wife bears them so they have heirs. A man who wants to care for a child is...well, it's attractive to me, at least. I'm certain others would find it attractive as well. You don't need that bottle, either. Come lay your head in my lap instead and we'll talk about something, or nothing, and not drink anymore. I won't let you hurt yourself. Perhaps I'm not...in a position to demand such things since we aren't in a relationship with one another, not a proper one, but I am your friend. You must care about me that way, at least, and seeing you like this hurts me."

The turtle teen blinked. "-oh. That. Yeah." He'd almost forgotten. With a slump of a shoulder he lets the quiver slide down and dangle about his elbow.

"Yeah, I don't know what it is about their leather stuff. If it's even really that. This stuff smells worse than some of the things Mikey eats, and that's saying something." He would never be able to understand how his little brother could stomach some of the things he did.

As usual and so it wasn't a surprise, Sansa wasn't telepathic and Tony hadn't articulated his emotions effectively, making him repeat, "I already fucked it up," like that would help clarify at all that he wasn't troubled by this yearning for a normal life, it was the continuously choosing to sabotage it then pretending like he had any right to feel this way. Heartsick was a good word, though. It did feel like his heart was going to vomit after being the one to line up the shots.

The touch to his hand was enough to make him drop it back into the sand, but he wasn't so easily convinced to come closer again, swaying against Sansa's shoulder only to slouch back into his own space with a frown. "Sorry. I know. I know I'm going to hurt you a lot," he said, and gave his own imperious wave before she could argue with him. "I can see the future," he declared. And as though this interlude hadn't come, he continued, "A lot of men around here adore that kid, it's hard not to. It's, don't take this the wrong way, hold on, it's kind of like it's our baby, the first in the village, rah rah, you know, whole thing. Did I tell you yet that you're the bravest?" That had happened, he was pretty sure, but he wasn't sure if he had told Sansa or just thought it very strongly at her. "No one else around here would have a baby. Absolutely terrifying."

There wasn't anyone around here called 'Mikey' as far as Tony knew, and, to be far, he hadn't heard about a giant turtle until now, either, but it did finally make Tony force himself up into a sitting position to ask, "Who?" More troublingly, this wasn't just an outcropping of the Agra 10 community that he had somehow not noticed, because Tony did have to suddenly acknowledge, "I'm from New York." They had that in common, which was a rare trait on this planet. Assuming the population density was observable in their limited experience, that made the amount of people in this star system who could claim Native New Yorker approximately 0.0000000076%. Assuming none of the locals were expats. "Who?" Tony repeated with that context, as though he knew anyone worth knowing in either Temba or New York, which was true.

"If the worst thing you can do to me is break my heart, I think I'll survive it," Sansa says quietly. "Men haven't been kind to me, Tony. The fact that I get to be with one who won't lift his hand against me, won't force me in his bed, won't degrade me - in a lot of ways, it's enough. The fact that I've gotten to be with two is a miracle."

Sansa draws her knees up to her chest and looks out at the ocean. This conversation isn't going well, based on her inability to comfort him, and she wonders what she could do better to ease Tony's heart because what she's doing is clearly not working.

"I know there are other people," she says, looking at his profile. "I don't know who they are but I can assume it. You've hurt one of them, I'm guessing? It's not because you're with me, is it? If it is, I'm sorry for my part in it, I guess, but I'm not sorry I was with you. It was...well. It was really good, actually." That's said with a blush and Sansa tries to hide it by pressing her face against her knees. "It wasn't just because it'd been a while. It was so good. I'm not sorry."

Sansa touches his hand. "I can't make you be with me, no matter how good it felt to have that kind of attention again. If you'd rather not share my bed for fear of hurting me...I understand. I didn't think about how it would affect anyone but me and that's selfish."

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