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carriage

WHO: Tony and open!
WHERE: Around Temba (hangar, fountain, ???)
WHAT: Doing some personal cleanup since the storm, and running into a floral distraction
WHEN: End of November/beginning of December
WARNINGS: It's a Tony post, we all should have expected it would get horny. It did.

a.The city had felt imposingly massive since the storm. Then, it was because of its depths and shadows, harbouring fears that only gave way to complex secrets as the clouds cleared, but today it was purely a problem of traversal. The hangar, looking slightly battered from the weather itself but not nearly as poorly treated as the ships finally returned inside, most of them still caked with mud and brought limping to roost, was approximately eight lightyears from the forge.

At least it was a fairly straight shot, but Tony felt half crazy by the time he came shuffling into the echoing space, the wheels of his cart dragged through the cracked roads rattling with a cohort of pebbles caught in their works, and abandoned the thing which felt like it had grown steadily heavier on this trek with a drop of his good arm and heave of a sigh. Gathering his energy again, he straightened to hug is arm cradled under the other, still wrapped and immobile against his chest, leaving his sleeve hanging empty, and headed for the Bloodsport to collect what remained of his onboard from their journey. There were tools there that had been sorely missed at the forge, and a variety of acquisitions from the Agrii cargo bay under Sundance's guidance, and a silky quilt that had Tony sitting in the doorway of the ship with it pulled up over his head, eyes closed and legs kicking idly, looking bruised and exhausted and trying not to look at the cart for just a minute while he meditated on his next move and definitely wasn't just stalling.

b. Most of the D.A.T.A. points had gone dark some time during their venture out to space, or, more likely, the storm that had seeped into all of their works. With the forge back to working order, it was time for Tony to address this problem, which it turned out he had made a rather large one for himself. The closest camera was installed near the fountain, though, and might have been the most important, to alert Tony to any new arrivals, so that would have to be his first stop to see what damage was done. They were all going to have to be upgraded; Tony wasn't going to be able to spread himself across the city to repair every one of them every time one of those storms hit. With his cartload of tools from the hangar, he would have to investigate the generator, surely flooded from the rain, and likely dismantle the watchful orb to find out what exactly had been burnt out in the overload from the storm's energy.

c. It definitely wasn't only the storm that had changed the charge of the city, though. As the skies cleared, it became obvious that the air had grown colder and crisper, and in the days that followed, the chill seemed to settle and harden the ground. Tony would have said it felt like autumn, but the alien plants didn't quite change the way they would have on Earth, growing brittle in the cold but without the warm oranges and yellows of a fall in New York. Instead, new plantlife seemed to have sprung up for him to notice on his long haul with his cart, giving him the good excuse to abandon it occasionally to crouch carefully at the side of the road, stiff in his bandages, and pluck up the young, frosty cyan buds that had started growing there. A few had flowered already, their petals petite but vibrantly blue, and smelling sharply spicy like cloves. He kept stopping to collect another, telling himself to deliver them to someone like Tommy to confirm that the smell didn't mean they were poisonous, maybe they were edible, and maybe this new growth meant that feeling that creep of ice on the air wasn't as much to worry about as Tony was starting to think. A winter couldn't be too harsh if these flowers were flourishing here.

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He waited patiently while Tony digested the thought, while he looked away in something that could be contemplation, or could be something else. He didn't know Tony well enough to read it very well. But he could be patient. After all, the man had stopped his flirting for at least a few moments; the conversation was perhaps not all a loss.

"I did," he replied with a small smile when his companion's gaze returned to him; maybe Tony was getting it. "A little more than a year ago that would not have occurred to me as a thing I could want. I could barely understand needs like adequate food and rest. The concept of wanting was all but foreign to me. I still struggle with it."

Okay, definitely worse for the Soldier. Tony abandoned his guarded pose, watching the other man curiously with searching calculation as he spoke, like he could conjure the rest of this explanation from the Soldier's body language. That sounded like incomplete programming to Tony, an unfinished AI, as his eye caught briefly on the metal arm. "I thought the Torch was the only synthezoid on the Invaders," he said. That would explain why he didn't really know where Bucky came from, but Tony doubted Steve would neglect to tell him something like that, and it would explain why the Bucky from his world never got the chance to come back.

He shook his head. "I don't know what those things — people? — are." Catching Tony's scrutiny out of the corner of his eye, he angled himself a little towards the man, wondering what he saw. The metal arm, certainly; it was what drew most people's focus. But he wasn't sure what else Tony could see, or would even want to see. "I'm human, for the most part. Modified, but human. But I'm not really a person. I'm a weapon."

Tony almost had an answer for him, but realized he wasn't sure if the Soldier didn't know what synthezoids or the Invaders were, and both seemed more appropriate for a very different conversation now that Tony wasn't as convinced that the Soldier might be a robot. Not completely unconvinced, but willing to believe him for now.

"Weapons only have one purpose," Tony muttered, partially in understanding, he could see what the Soldier was trying to say, but he finished with a pointed glance around them at the bulkhead and the blanket they shared. Not really within the defined bounds of a weapon's activities. "If I had to guess..." he mused, still looking away, mostly so this didn't feel like a prompt that the Soldier felt Tony expected him to respond to, "you learned those needs and wants because you tried it out." Just a suggestion. In the meantime, Tony was much less coy about asking, "What happened to you?"

"Weapons only have one purpose," he confirmed. "Layer that with my presence here and I have to assume that the Agrii, and the Atroma before them, desired such a weapon to add to their arsenal."

He could tell where Tony wad trying to lead, given the context of the start of their conversation. Others had tried before but not as many with as much consideration. "You are correct. But as far as trying out the idea of partnering with another, I don't believe it works quite that way. I can look at a woman or a man and I don't experience any sort of attraction."

He shrugged in response to the question; the story was not one he felt inclined to share. "HYDRA."

Given how much the Agrii seemed to be against them arming themselves, up to and including limiting their possible armaments to their strange memory allocation, Tony wasn't entirely sold on the Soldier's assumptions, and pouted dubiously. If it was an arsenal they were building, they certainly had much better options to pull into this situation than some of the other people that were here. Tony was a clear waste of resources.

He started to laugh at the Soldier's next assumption, though, because he probably deserved that one; he was an expert at crafting a specific image of himself. "No, I meant--not that specifically," he clarified, but tipped his head to allow for the Soldier's 'partnering' to be part of the consideration. "Just, that the future is bright, your trajectory. Eventually, you're going to feel more like a person, the human parts, maybe you'll even want a name. And maybe by then you still won't feel that attraction and--I think that's okay, you know, listen, what do I know?"

Tony could understand never finding any real comfort in other people after what HYDRA must have done to the Soldier to leave him talking about himself like this. Tony's capture and the torture that led to the Iron Man could hardly have been comparable, and it had left him skittish, afraid to let anyone close enough to see the physical scars, let alone what other damage had been done. Still, he continued, avoiding the Soldier's eye again, "I don't think I would be alive right now if I couldn't fall in love so easily. I mean, every one of those is a heartbreak, sure, and it never gets less painful, but if I didn't think--if I didn't think Sansa's hair was so beautiful, or Steve's eyes were so brilliant, I don't know if I could believe so much in the future. It's made of all of these exquisite parts of people, that I love so much that I have to make sure they see it."

The Soldier had two very important things that Tony did not: the command codes that allowed HYDRA to turn him into the perfect weapon, and the implant that allowed the Atroma to control him. As far as he knew, he was one of the few with the first, and the only one with the second; what else was he to think, especially given what they'd learned of the Agrii's link to the Atroma?

"Maybe," he agreed, looking at Tony curiously. He certainly seemed to be taking a strange enough angle on it, compared to the Soldier's other experiences with this sort of conversation. "Mostly, I encounter a lot of people who have opinions on what they think I should want, and do a lot of protesting when I don't actually want those things. It's exhausting, so I don't bother trying to explain anymore." He's had far too much of people expressing their own opinions of his choices — or distaste at his lack of desire to make a choice on something. One didn't throw off decades of torture and mind wipes overnight — if in fact he ever fully would. Taking things at his own pace was, presumably, too slow in the minds of some people. Live and let live: who knew that so many people didn't really want to do just that?

"You know more than you think you do, if you truly understand that different things are right for different people." Simple words, for a situation that was anything but. And though he couldn't guess at the depth of what Tony hid in his turned-away gaze, he could respect it. Trauma, or even mild distress, shouldn't be a pissing contest; no one should measure his or her suffering — or successes — against another person's. It was all personal, all what went into making a person, and shouldn't be quantified on some numerical scale. "If that makes you want to live, then it is good that you have it." He paused, searching for the words, pulling up a conversation he'd had some time ago. It was weird to share it with Tony, but the man had been considerate of his own explanations thus far; perhaps he would understand it. "Being a ghost, it can be easy. Living, that's harder. Only you should decide what you choose to do, and how you choose to go about it."

As alien as the Soldier's personal dehumanization was, Tony found he very much understood what he must have felt like under the pressure of other people's frustrated expectations, and how he might have come to his way of dealing with that constant spectre. Tony finally relaxed enough to sink back on his good hand instead of hunching close to the doorframe to hold his weight, and gave a lopsided shrug at the Soldier's generous assessment of Tony's breadth of understanding. He might not have been so generous about whatever was going on wit the Soldier's attraction module if he hadn't already been primed by Sansa and Jon, in their own ways. "I find it's easier to just let people think I'm exactly who they want me to be," he suggested, though he wasn't under any impression that would make the Soldier any happier. Just another way to cope.

The ghost thing was more difficult for Tony to grasp, leaving him feeling like he was missing part of the puzzle and watching the Soldier inquisitively again. "You're still here, must be something you're living for," he tried. Tony's attempts at being a ghost led inexorably to a suicidal precipice very quickly, but maybe he was always a little closer to that edge than he should have been.

Sharp eyes followed Tony's movements; even in casual situations he couldn't stop himself from the threat analysis — though it now took shape more as injury analysis. Combined with the exhaustion the other man so clearly wore it made for a disturbing picture, and he decided that he should pay attention to anything he might do to decrease that burden.

"Does it work for you?" There was honest curiosity behind the question, because such strategy hadn't worked for the Soldier thus far. Then again, he didn't really know who he used to be before he was the Winter Soldier; the weight of the expectations and disappointments of others got heavy. "And who do you think I want you to be?" He tried not to lay unfair expectations on the shoulders of others; he didn't know if he always succeeded. And he wasn't sure he could trust Tony's answer, but it could be interesting to see what he would say.

"Mmm," he agreed thoughtfully. He knew he could easily fall back into the habit of nonexistence, of blending so seamlessly and invisibly into the background of life as to not really exist at all. It was a useful skill but also too slippery a slope. "If nothing else, as one with experience with the Atroma, and that's rare here. For now, it suffices as a reason not to disappear." Avoiding the question? Absolutely.

"Spectacularly," Tony replied, though it was evident this tactic might have relied on the ease with which Tony slipped into the dazzling grin that he flashed the Soldier, practiced as much as the Soldier might have been honing his aim and gone as quickly as Tony could put it on as he slouched back into what may or may not have been a more genuine, contemplative pout. So far, the man hadn't been terribly easy to anticipate, and most of Tony's performance typically depended on the elaborate groundwork laid in his very public persona back home, so what anyone actually wanted from him in this place was an ongoing puzzle.

The Soldier's non-answer gave Tony another piece, at least. He felt he owed this group his expertise somehow, that he had to be reliable, however that would actually crystallize. Tony gave a slow nod of understanding, then offered, "I expect it would be easiest for you if I was the model vapid narcissist. Guaranteed not to get in your way and easy to spot, can be reliably found covering his own ass when the shit hits the fan so you're never left wondering what I might be doing."

"Is that so?" He kept his tone carefully neutral, knowing the words could be interpreted in many ways from snarky to sincere. Such behavior wouldn't work for him, he thought, but it was interesting that it clearly must for Tony especially given how easily he fell right back into that confident smile. Still, the fact that the smile didn't last and was replaced by a more contemplative look had to mean something.

"Interesting," he said, "that we've talked of wants and needs and choices, and you immediately offer what you think would be easy for me, and not what you might want yourself." He eyed Tony for another minute before looking away. "It would perhaps be easiest for you if I played the part of the model HYDRA assassin, save that I don't want to stab you."

What Tony could possibly be getting out of the Soldier being as he said wasn't clear, making Tony raise his eyebrows inquisitively, feeling like he had either missed something or been radically off the mark with his own assessment. "Oh, absolutely not," he had to correct, "I'd definitely be missing the stabbing. You don't?" That question might have been a little sincere, because most people were pretty open about how satisfying stabbing Tony just a little bit would be, but mostly pushing the Soldier to find out for both of them if he was really committed to that position. He still had time to change his mind. He would have to keep any amendment to himself, though, because Tony was continuing quickly with another shrug to brush it off, shaking his head, "The assassin is too hard to read. Somebody with his heart on his sleeve, all of the buttons out there in the open for me to push, that's easy. You've got a lot of armor on, you're going to be pissing me off for a long time if you keep this up."

"I'm very good at it," he replied plainly. "But I do not desire to be a killer on a leash." Or a killer at all, but he wasn't sure he'd get that choice. At the very least he considered this planet hostile; though they hadn't encountered much in the way of threatening lifeforms, didn't mean it wasn't going to happen.

"So you wish an amusement?" He cocked his head, trying to decipher if there was anything more in that statement. Did Tony wish to just annoy him? Or something else? He couldn't decide. Maybe Tony just enjoyed being antagonistic? The thrill of a challenge? "I piss a lot of people off. You should probably spend time with Rogers and the other Barnes. You can flirt more successfully, and you can all hate me together."

See, the Soldier did have desires, even if they weren't particularly ambitious or sexy ones, earning him a wry smile and slow nod from Tony; sure, that was a reasonable thing to not want. They'd have to be on the lookout for anyone actually trying to pick up that leash. Tony would have to be convinced that their alien hosts posed that kind of threat.

"I'm very good at amusing myself," he answered with another smirk and shake of his head, because he hadn't said riling people up was his entertainment, necessarily. He said it was easy. But like with the Soldier's stabbing, they were going to have to take each other at their word until evidence presented itself. "I don't like being surprised by what sets someone off. It's going to be something, and when we're both under pressure, I--I've got to be in control. And when I don't know what's going on in their brainmatter, it's easy, I know what to expect if I can get them back to that zero point, if they're ready to deck me." That was a lot to admit that Tony knew would sound sociopathic to anyone else, but the Soldier must have had his own experience with controlling a desired outcome that he could understand. "Rogers...," was a good example, making Tony tilt his head from side to side with consideration, but this left him with a question.

"Is that who you meant, people who expected you to be something?" he prompted, but didn't really need that answer. He had plenty of his own experience with Captain America's rigid expectations. "I don't think I'm exactly what they expect, either," he said with a shrug of defeat, though he wasn't sure how much of that was just projection after Wanda had made it clear just how very different their experiences were, and from what little he knew about that Tony, he must have been a grave disappointment. Frowning across the hangar, he recognized, "Meeting that guy dressed up in your face, who had your life, but got his shit together, that must be a real mindfuck." And it must have been frustrating, being on the other side of that table, so 'hate' could have been accurate.

It was a very real concern to him, the fact that he could be controlled. Only one person knew, and he trusted Wanda to use whatever force necessary to stop him, should it come to that; an ugly burden for sure, but one he could promise her as well.

"Ah. Button pushing of that sort." The Soldier shook his head with a wry expression. "In a combat or mission situation, I'm probably the most unshakeable person here." After all, he had a lot of experience. "I imagine there would be more important things than punching you in the face. You wouldn't be able to make me break like that." In such situations the primary objective and most desirable outcome would be finishing the job, and he was very good at that. Compartmentalization was easy in that way. Everything that came after?

Well. That was what punching bags were for.

"Not the only one," he admitted after a period of silence. "But certainly an outspoken one." The other Barnes had been even more so, and their interactions had been less than pleasant. "It wasn't that he had a different life. It was that he felt entitled to all the details of mine, and kept pushing after I said no." It was more than he'd intended to say, and he bit off any further comments before they could slip out. It wasn't fair to air such thoughts around Tony, even though it seemed like Tony might have his own interesting feelings about the pair.

"Combat is not the only kind of pressure," Tony pointed out with a coy dip of his chin, studying the Soldier because he had to know that, even if he didn't think he'd be willingly placing himself into such compromising positions. Very little of what they had been forced to deal with here had been a physical fight, and most of it seemed designed to break them, well beyond any of Tony's manipulative capabilities.

It might have just been his tactic to build himself out of those manipulations, but the Soldier at least seemed to be kind enough to just tell Tony the kind of thing that was bound to set him on edge without Tony getting his hands dirty. He'd said it enough different ways now that Tony could even believe him, and archived the boundaries accordingly. "It must be threatening," he mused, staring ahead of them again toward the grounded ships. "I've been acutely aware that I am most likely the worst possible version of myself, and a part of me has been grateful that whatever else this whole situation is, it's clearly a containment zone for my brand of bullshit. But, listen, there's a kind of liberation in rock bottom--and, I'm not saying we're the same flavour of nightmare, I don't know, maybe you, god forbid, like yourself a little bit, you absolute pervert, but for him to look at you and see all of those mistakes that could have been his...that must be hard to take. Not that she should be taking it out on you, I'm just..." Tony rolled his eyes, you know, considering what it would be like. Lamely, he finished, "I don't know, I haven't talked to him much and I didn't get one of you of my own, so..."

"I'm not going to punch you because you flirt at me," he replied with a roll of the eyes. "I just wanted to save you the effort of trying."

He allowed his gaze to follow Tony's to the ships, taking in metal plating and whatever polymer made up the windows. Ugly things they were, but elegant in their own way he supposed. Certainly more elegant than the situation with its doubles and its differing worlds and the whole mess of it all. He recognized that a more adjusted, normal person might even offer some platitude, some reassurance that clearly Tony wasn't the worst, not if he could express such thoughts about himself. "There's very little to like here," he said, "unless you're actually looking for a brain damaged assassin." Or an assassin who could be triggered to obey any command without question, but he didn't think that worth pointing out.

"I suppose you have me now," he mused. "If nothing else, I'll eventually require maintenance."

"See, we don't know what it's like, it must be traumatizing having to deal with all of this," Tony started to laugh, glad for the solidarity, finding enough energy to sit up and gesture emphatically with his good arm in his empathy for Barnes, forced to witness the brain damaged assassin and cope with the reality of the Soldier trying to live his life. When Tony slouched back down, it was with a sway of his weight to bump against the Soldier's metal shoulder in recognition before settling back on his hand.

"I'll take it," he accepted loftily, nose in the air as though after all of that he could play at being above such companionship, and the performance could even stick when he turned on the Soldier again quickly with a sharp grin. "These talents don't come cheap, Sunshine, that's very presumptuous of you. You'll have to at least do some scrap work for me, and there's some clean up at the library that could use a big, strong man."

"I clearly just can't fathom the pain of not getting what you want," he deadpanned in reply, because that was the summation of his conversation with Barnes: Barnes didn't like being told no. Yes it was a little more complicated, but there was the heart of it. He stiffened a little when Tony bumped into him, starting to move to steady the man before realizing that the notion had been intentional. Curious, that. Very rarely did anyone who wasn't Sansa seek to actually touch him, even casually. It reminded him again pcd boundaries, and he decided that this wasn't a violation of one.

"I suppose if the library needs a big, strong man, that you've already fulfilled that role and I'm not needed," he replied readily enough, just to see what it would do to that grin. "But yes, I'll barter for repairs when I need maintenance that's beyond my own ability to perform."

What it did was break the grin into a laugh of disbelief, and Tony gladly conceded with a nod that he had clearly been played, because the Soldier was obviously capable of flirting despite his protests. "Keep it up, flattery will get you everywhere, I'll even throw in a free oil change," he said. As good as the exchange had been for his energy, the laugh making Tony optimistic, it still took him more time than he had hoped to pull himself up to his feet, then slowly twist to try to tug the blanket he had been cocooned in away from the Soldier. In the interim, he had sobered enough to suggest more seriously, because he wasn't sure if the Soldier had really just brushed him off on top of trying to charm him, "If you do go, to the library I mean, you should...you should talk to Jon." And that was already more direct than he had meant to be, unwilling to share exactly why he thought that was important, not about to be the one to spill Jon's potentially enlightening experiences with control and desire for him. So Tony gave a nod of finality, as though he had decided for the Soldier that he would be doing this and that was all that needed to be said on the matter.

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carriage

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Attempts to crawl out from under a rock

just a brief hibernation

something like that

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I casually misgender Bucky in my last tag? Proofreading is for suckers

I see nothing, clearly anyone who sees something is LYING

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