revivalproject | treasure

Entry tags:

treasure

WHO: Tony and...I don't know, there's some predetermined stuff, and some ambiguously open stuff in here. Check in at the Shenanigans plotting post if you're feeling unsure and need a formal invitation.
WHERE: The forge, the not-library
WHAT: Tony has a gift for Jon, and is trying to make a much more misguided gift for Poe. Some early speeder bike development catch all, if you like.
WHEN: Early February, Agrii Valentines Celebration
WARNINGS: Glitter?

a. The forge [OTA! If you just want to bring your own project, this is a good place]
The first shimmering fleck that caught Tony's eye fell onto his cheek, making him wink with his face twisted in surprise before carefully retrieving it with a finger pressed to the...plastic? It stuck easily to his skin, but Tony could only frown at it, baffled, and glance back toward the forge curiously, expecting the chimney to be pouring out some foreign element among the plume of dark smoke. He was on his back under the body of the vehicle that Cayde had called a sparrow, Poe had called a speeder, and was probably neither of them, really, as Tony slowly brought it together, the Iron Man kneeling in the grass next to him to Jack up the whole assembly for Tony to rework the fuel array again. Eventually, he would get this thing working.

As more of the strange precipitation began to flurry through the sky, clumping together against the seams of the Iron Man and through the bricks of the forge, Tony had to sit up and consider very seriously that this was...glitter. As he stared at the armor, he could see some of the more fanciful details--the heart shapes, the stars, making him raise a lip in confusion, then glance around again, seeking a source. It just seemed to be, warm and shimmery and catching the early light in a dancing array over the skyline.

By the time the sun had properly risen, he had disturbed Catra trying to sleep by the fire by clattering around in the forge, searching for empty vessels to collect as much of the strange glitter as possible. Impulsively, he had snatched at the bouquet of flowers he found by her head, only to have them burst in his hand and make him yelp, dancing away from the glitter bomb with his hand coated now in pink and red. He was much slower to pick up the card that had been with the bouquet, pinched carefully between two fingers until it didn't seem to be a bomb as well, the Agrii's pictures making him snort. Of course. It went up with the notes from Cayde and Jon that were clipped over his workbench, slouching against Cayde's map and funnelling more of the glitter throughout the day to gather in the folds of Jon's still designs.

By the time he was back to working on the bike, there were bowls and jars arranged against the walls and among the grass, incrementally measuring the shimmering downpour. This was going to be wreaking havoc on any meal production, Tony realized, so Tommy wasn't as likely to show up today, leaving him to grumble at the pile of tools and components that had been left around the weedy patch where he worked without the kid to find anything for him in this mess.

b. The library? [For Jon, but feel free to crash this party]
If Tony was going to try to understand the Agrii, and he would rather not, he hazarded a guess that whatever this glitter storm and gifting was about, it was something of an apology for the storm that they had come crashing into, or the giant pest problem that the Agrii had neglected to warn them about. Maybe that was just where Tony's head was, though, because he had plenty of his own apologies to make, and a misguided gift was historically how he dealt with that. Did he have something in common with the Agrii? Jesus.

Trying not to think too hard about that possibility, he came gliding slowly into the library on the Iron Man's skates, leaving rivulets in the dusting of glitter on the floor behind him. He carried what would have been a familiar shape to Jon, despite being wrapped as it was in what looked like a scrap of leather, against his armored chest; an acquisition from the replicator that he had impulsively requested just after replacing his sunglasses, then finding himself very overwhelmed with the amount of stuff he could really use at the forge. Taking the stairs down into the basement wasn't quite as smooth, producing a strange, very heavy thunk-thunk-thunk as he rolled carelessly down each step, the momentum depositing him against the desk that rattled with the lurch. He didn't really intend to stay, but had a quick look around for the Countess, hoping maybe she would display a tiny bit less annoyance upon seeing him so he could pretend Jon wasn't as annoyed with him as well. Yeah, that would totally work, Tony would feel great about that and all of his problems would be solved. He sighed into the mask when he didn't spot the animal, leaving the book on the desk and pushing himself back toward the stairs. It would be pretty obvious who it could have been from, Tony thought, even if Jon had no context for the author 'Reed Richards'--only a few pages into the forward of this physics text- cum-autobiography and it was already colourful with the caped heroes of Tony's world, and how they shaped the natural laws around them. And the library had just expanded exponentially, even if Jon wasn't particularly keen on the gesture and couldn't be convinced that Billy was clearly being very thoughtful.

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"I'm not thrilled about the food we have here, either," Tony pointed out. They weren't exactly in a great position to be picky, and Jon was already being overly cautious to Tony. Iron Man tilted his head, but the question he had didn't quite read, concealed behind the armor, wondering if it really was caution or a deliberate deprivation. Instead of trying to ask, he let his hand creep up Jon's back to press between his shoulders.

"Maybe he missed something," he agreed. "It sounded like he wasn't really, uh, present. Come on." The glow was emanating from deeper in the cave, but Iron Man tapped the circle of light at the centre of his chest reassuringly. They weren't going to be left completely blind as they stepped out of the sun.

Now this? Gets a little chuckle from Jon and he turns his head enough to glance up at Tony's helmet-covered face. "Alright, I won't tell Tommy what you think about his cooking skills." He lets this linger for a moment before returning his attention back forward, maintaining some of this moment of bemusement as he starts walking into the cave at last. "Though I agree that the protein paste is dreadful. I gave it one try and still wish I hadn't."

Jon's own steps are light compared to the heavy ones of Tony's armor, but that's not what grabs his attention once they are a few meters inside and already mostly out of sunlight's reach. There is the distant glow they are inevitably heading towards, but the air in the cave itself just feels heavy to Jon and he tenses slightly with his own steps. "I... I think I know what Cal may have stumbled over." He comments with a forming frown. "It's still... Faint. Here at least."

As unforgiving as the armor was, the way Iron Man raised his hands and gave a panicked shudder was still a clear enough statement on his opinion of being so exposed to Tommy's ire. He'd managed to create a delicate balance with the Young Avenger where Tony could spend a comfortable ten minutes with him before he said something to make Tommy sour, and he hadn't even worked out the calculation for that yet. "Very predictable, though," he did counter, of the protein paste. There hadn't been a lot of instances in his time here that Tony had been prepared for something he had put in his mouth.

To Tony, the cave was...a cave. Damp and echoing with the waves off of the beach on one side, and a drip echoing from the depths on the other, and a generally unpleasant experience being both enclosed and creeping with the oppressive dark. The glow was an intriguing lure that he wandered toward, but he mostly kept his watch on Jon and the temperature, ready for it to get too cold and to gently turn them back. He wasn't expecting what they were looking for to be in question.

"What, 'what'?" he tried. "He said the Agrii thought there would be shelter here from the storm." There wasn't something here as much as there was storm out there.

"Fear, Tony." Jon answers softly as they stepped deeper into the cave, approaching the glow further within. "There is... A lot of it here. Old fear. Lingering..." He casts a frown over to the armored man. "Cal is a lot more attuned to sensing emotions - And other things I can't quite understand myself. But I can feel it quite clearly even here. Stronger even than on the Agrii ship when we found it empty." Which isn't necessarily something Jon has told Tony about his stay on the ship. That lingering feeling of dread the Archivist had picked up while his group was searching through empty hallways and rooms.

The frown on Jon's face twitches and he turns his attention back forward when around a rocky bend in their path the first glowing crystals come into view. The sight comes with a sudden jab of pain exploding within Jon's skull and he flinches once, yet refuses to pause. At least until Tony's armor begins to glow again, not unlike what it has done when Cal turned on his weapon. "....oh."

That was exactly what they were hoping for, wasn't it? Tony supposed it was reasonable that Jon didn't enjoy that, the feeling or the reminder that he was here to find a meal, but it sounded like a step in the right direction to Tony so while Jon frowned, Tony brightened behind his mask. If it was new fear, they might have something of a problem. "That's great," he offered, with his hands up to balance the myriad of caveats he did recognize. "Not that a whole bunch of people were suffering, but that's long over and already the problem we were working on, in the long run, so, great, there's a bunch of free fear here, we just have to, uh, get it." Could Jon do that while he was on the ship? Plenty of what happened to him while they were up there was still a mystery to Tony, and it wasn't really a wound he wanted to reopen.

He missed Jon's flinch, even as the armor registered it with a flicker at the corner of his eye, because at the same time his whole HUD treated him to a blinding overload that made him squint around the light and put his hands up like he could block it out. That was at least familiar, and Tony wasn't surprised when he tore the helmet off to escape the static to find the metal glowing. "Oh," he agreed, holding the helmet like a fishbowl between them as it continued to throw up its own light from the inside, unwilling to shut down and playing a myriad of frantic colours across the stones around them like a broken projector. "Maybe we make this quick," he proposed.

If there is one part of this that Jon doesn't enjoy, then it's that he actually likes walking into this growing sensation of past dread and how willing he is to soak it all up. If it tells him one thing, then that there is a part of him quite willing to seek out and draw out what terror surrounds him.

But he puts that realization aside for now, instead focusing on the upturned helmet once it's taken off, wincing sympathetically up at Tony in response to the lightshow the man just has had to endure. He looks back over to the first set of crystals they can actually see. "These also serve as power sources in the city, don't they." Jon ponders aloud, but resumes moving further into the cave itself. "There must be some use for them. Do you think you could work with them? You made Cal's weapon..."

The weapon that has one of these crystals in it. Which isn't something anyone has actually told Jon, however.

What Jon did or didn't already know about the lightsaber wasn't obvious to Tony, so he wasn't surprised in any way by the question, only pondering the crystals as he trailed after Jon with his strobing helmet cradled in front of him. "That's the working theory, that the rods from the power station are some kind of refined version of these," he agreed. "But the refinement process is still a mystery. If the theory is correct, then clearly the process manages some of the wilder output, because I've got one of those powering the suit without the lightshow."

He didn't think it was entirely correct that he got any credit for Cal's weapon, though. "Cal was the one that found the crystals, and figured they could do they same thing his old sword used to do, or whatever. I just made the thing a case. If anyone has the best hope of understanding these things and making use of them, it's probably Reeve. He gets the power systems here, and he had something similar where he came from--he had a couple of different names for it. I thought he was talking about oil or natural gas at first, but he said it was more..." Tony waved a hand, generally, around them, trying to come up with how Reeve had described his power source, and landed on, "Primal."

"Mako." Jon answers automatically, his eyes tracing another set of crystals as they pass. "The lifestream of their planet. The souls and memories of all living beings turned into energy... Might as well turn human bodies into fuel and call it renewable energy." There is a scowl in his voice. Not an accusatory, but a pensive one. "Reeve, Cloud and their friends made the right call to put a stop to it. Didn't appear to have been easy, but- Worth it. And I heard things are improving for their planet and their people." Cloud has told him quite a few things. About what happened and his disease. A disease Reeve has by now confirmed he has been cured from in the end. Which Jon remains glad about.

"The Agrii didn't seem very spiritual. Neither does anything in Temba hint at any sort of spiritual tendencies. These crystals are natural resources, yes, but... That appears to be about it." And at last he turns his attention back to Tony to declare comparably cheerful: "I don't believe your suit is powered by the soul of an ancient alien, and neither is Temba." As for figuring out how to refine these raw crystals... Now that may be a mystery left to those more adept in the matter.

Jon's attention is still with Tony when he casts out another random question. "...do you think the weapons they gave us use these as well?" He manages to finish his question before stopping short and freezing in place, eyes moving ahead and into the large cavern they have just set foot in. It's spacious and suspiciously empty.

The lightsaber made sense for Jon to know something about, but knowing so much about Reeve's planet did some as a small surprise. Reeve could be tight and awkward talking to Tony about his regrettable past, and Cloud, while soulful and easy to bait, wasn't very good at...talking. "Have you been talking to Reeve...?" Tony muttered toward Jon's back, not sure how else to account for his confident recollection but sure one of them would have told him if they were getting along finally. Wouldn't they? Maybe he didn't deserve an answer to that question.

Jon's cheerful confidence about the source of the crystals' power was more surprising still, thought Tony was sure Reeve would be happy to know Jon thought so. It hadn't occurred to Tony to look for any evidence of spirituality in the Agrii culture, and he pouted curiously at the concept and how that might have been factoring in to the puzzle thus far. More immediately, he countered, "Do you think the faith is what makes it real?" Just because the Agrii didn't believe or worship it or whatever, didn't mean a system like the life stream wasn't also present on this planet.

Tony almost bumped into Jon as he abruptly stopped, letting the helmet swing down by his side in one hand to wrap the other over Jon's shoulder, peering up to the opening ceiling. He wasn't sure how much Jon actually cared about the weapons thing now, but he did absently murmur, "I never looked that close at them." Tony had been trying to keep his distance, after Reeve reminded him that any other version of him had managed much better self-control and moral rigour about their stance on weapons development.

"...calibrations." Jon answers absentmindedly as he steps forward and further into the cavern, his eyes trailing along the crystal-encrusted ceiling and from there down to where the big cave splits up into further smaller ones. Yes, he has learned a few things while getting to see Reeve's spacious office. Very much a direct counterpart to his own little basement-dwelling. He keeps talking while slowly stepping through the cavern, hesitating here and there as if taking something in. "...also helped him do those measurements... When you let me use--" The gauntlet, yes. They had made good progress with that one. "But Cloud... He told me a lot. Wanted me to understand his disease." And Jon has his ways to make people talk. That the Archivist's presence alone can be quite helpful to add coherence and and eloquence to someone having a hard time expressing themselves is not exactly a secret to him at this point.

He stops in his traipsing and shudders involuntarily at an all too familiar sensation crawling up his back and his eyes fixate onto one of the smaller caves, a deep scowl settling on his features. "Oh, shit, this is--" Jon chokes and his eyes travel back up to stare at the crystals above. before his world explodes into everything and he doesn't even notice that he's falling backwards, eyes wide and expression mortified.

Jon had been far more effective at taking advantage of Calibrations than Tony had been, he was figuring out, which was a little unsettling. Tony thought he had been very carelessly invasive while he had the chance. So he was still watching Jon closely as the Archivist appeared to be cataloguing something that he couldn't see throughout the cave, making him more prepared for the next sudden stop, hand already tentatively up like last time and turning to try to follow Jon's gaze and see what he was seeing. "What...?" Tony tried, because he was still just getting 'atmospheric cave' and, at best, 'there might be water that way', which wasn't particularly remarkable.

He was looking back to Jon just in time to see him overbalance. The helmet rang and clattered as Tony dropped it and it bounced off of the rocks, skipping away down the slope of the cave and throwing its lights erratically over the walls. Meanwhile, Tony had flung both arms around Jon before his head could do the same, letting him sag back like Tony held him in a deep dip where Tony could watch his face, equally wide-eyed with panic. "Boss? You still with me?" he urged, touching Jon's cheek then the pulse in his neck as he glanced rapidly around the cave once more for what could have been the cause of whatever this was.

Jon's drive to gather knowledge hasn't left him while they were all locked in the tunnels.And those dreams made it very easy and convenient to learn and experience new things.

That he isn't plain hitting the floor is a little blessing Jon is very willing to accept, even as he keeps staring up, his expression twitching with growing distress while literally everything there is to know tries to force its way into his head at once. It's not merely knowledge, though. It's also everything terrible that has transpired in this cave the Agrii had hoped to find shelter in. All the old suffering, the pain and terror they had hoped to find tries to wedge itself among it all resulting in a pulsing, twisting knot Jon can't even point a finger at since all it appears to do is try to burst through his skull.

Tony still receives a reaction. It's little more than a strained gargle and a tentatively raised hand with no clear goal aside from providing a sign of life. Too much. It's just too much at once.

Externally, the experience of suddenly not knowing anything, as it felt to Tony, was not much better. To him, it looked as though Jon was having some kind of seizure or stroke, leaving him very torn on how to handle it. "Okay," he accepted, breathless and rushed and his best attempt at sounding less panicked than he felt, "that's good, keep, uh, talking." If that was how anyone could take that sound that had clawed its way out of Jon.

Whatever it was, staying in this cave and hoping it stopped didn't seem like a viable option. As carefully as Tony could manage in his anxious hurry, he bowed to gather Jon up and cradled against his chestplate, trying to keep his head steady against an unforgiving shoulder. "Keep talking," he said again, trying to fill the space, "I shouldn't have to tell you that, that shouldn't be a problem, you're always talking, come one, when do you have nothing to say?" The rocks under his feet didn't feel nearly as unsteady, shifting and sliding under every step as they had made their way into the cave. It left echoes of metal scraping against the stone as he retreated from the glow and the static projected from the abandoned helmet.

While the armor doesn't offer the same warmth and comfort and covers a lot of that familiar scent of the man wearing it, Jon still leans instinctively against the cool support and after half a dozen steps even manages to squeeze his eyes shut with a wince. The next and more notable sign of life is Jon's hand reaching up to Tony's opposite shoulder and try to cling to the smooth material while turning the rest of his body to press his face against the cold surface with a half swallowed whimper.

They have exited the large cavern at that point and the pressure on Jon's mind has eased enough to allow him to actually breathe again. Which he at least tries to honor by attempting to form actual words, as requested. "....kkkgnngh...-it... t-Tony... it-a-hnn... hurts--"

And it does. Not only the sudden onslaught of it all, but almost more so to lose it all again so abruptly, leaving Jon dizzy and nauseous.

Closing his eyes was at least slightly less disturbing, and Tony was happy to take that as a good sign. The whimper, however, had him muttering, "No, no, it's okay, you're okay...", then trying to gingerly hitch Jon up closer to his ear as he realized the man was trying to tell him something. Was it a good sign?

It was a development. So Tony hurried on, pulling Jon away from the cave and toward the orange light of the setting sun and the whisper of the ocean across the sand, the small window of it at the mouth of the cave looking shockingly bright and lively after the close air of the damp stones. "We're just going to warm you up," Tony decided frantically, like that might do something, "And relax, take a deep breath." Not that he was confident that this would solve the problem, which was clear enough in the way he cautiously shifted to shade a hand over Jon's face and ear to ease the transition into the light.

And Jon does, in fact, take a deep breath. Deep, heavy and slow. Inhale the same as the exhale that produces an accompanying, unhappy noise. "...Tony, I-- I saw it all--" He manages and tries to peek back over Tony's shoulder. Back to where they are coming from. Back towards the cave. The cave holding all this misery right along with all the answers.

At least the distance from it allows Jon's mind to slowly settle again, leaving him to softly mutter little curses and frustrations while Tony walks them both back outside. What little squirming he does is easy enough to keep under control though, given he is hardly putting any effort into it at all. "-there are answer here, Tony. I just-- I can't- shit."

Okay, full phrases were a definite improvement, but it might not have been quite time yet for wiggling. "Sure, alright," Tony welcomed the cursing, not really processing exactly what Jon was saying so much as that he was saying it, and working from there once he felt confident that Jon wasn't about to pass out.

The sand of the beach was more welcoming than the rocky cave, though Iron Man couldn't appreciate it much as he knelt down to sit Jon in the sun-warmed, sliding patch off of the tamped down path, where he could steady him on solid ground. "Again," he mumbled, and took a demonstrative deep breath himself that made his tight chest ache in surprise, anxious heart resistant, and held a glove against Jon's cheek to keep him still enough to watch for any alarming pupil response.

Being put down onto the sand has Jon look up slightly and cast a pensive glance in Tony's direction, hesitating briefly before nodding once, then twice and then taking that additional breath.

"...I... I'm sorry..." He starts babbling again, attention drifting back towards the cave entrance. Part of him wants to head right back in there, struggling against the part that is afraid of doing just that. Another thought pushes itself into the forefront of Jon's mind, causing him to drop his head. "Cal... he was in there-- all by himself..."

Focus was good, awareness was good, nothing seemed to be immediately dysfunctional anymore, letting Tony relax back on his heels with his own slow exhale, not entirely relieved but able to let his hand sag down Jon's back to hang absently from his shirt instead of holding him up anxiously. "Yeah, just don't do it again," he interrupted the apology with a wry twist of his mouth and brow furrowed to ask Jon where he thought that was going.

As Jon dropped his gaze, Tony gave his hook to Jon's shirt a tug, expecting another pained noise and not to be confronted with the idea that Cal possibly had the same experience of whatever that just was. "Listen, he's not there anymore, he's okay, you're okay," he offered gently, though wasn't very sure of that himself anymore. "You're okay?" he tried with another tug, tilting his head to try to catch Jon's eye again and offer anything he needed, and maybe some assurance that Cal wasn't still suffering from whatever pain the cave had to inflict on the empathic .

Jon remains sitting where he is in a moment of silence, pulling his own hands into his lap and twisting them together somewhat. Tony is right. As he often is. Cal is okay and so is he - Thanks to Tony's presence. "Thanks to you, I am..." He relays his thoughts before actually glancing up to meet Tony's eyes, offering the weakest smile along with the eye contact.

Though there is that still lingering frown as well. "Tony... In there-I- For a moment I- I knew everything. I understood it all, had all the answers! And then--" Jon pauses, wincing a little at his own following words. "...it's all gone again. Taken. I... Don't like this. It still... I will be fine." Losing knowledge remains the worst. And Jon can only guess how being in this cave may have looked for Cal, who in all likelihood suffered an even worse effect.

That wasn't very convincing, making Tony's smile in return marred by a distressed furrow of his brow as he searched Jon's expression for something more reassuring. What Jon probably needed was Billy, a glass of water at least, and somewhere to lie down, and what Tony had to offer was a ginger curl of his finger through Jon's hands to discourage their fretting and try to coax his weight against Tony's shoulder again.

Teasing Jon about not doing that again suddenly seemed premature, if doing it again meant they might understand something finally. Tony was tensely quiet for a moment that felt very long, hands stiff and lips slowly parting like he knew he was supposed to be saying something while he did rapidly calculate the cost and value of that potential knowledge, to know what was happening to them here and how to get them all home, how likely it was that what Jon knew was true, then just how awful of a person Tony was for even doing the analysis with the image of Jon's harrowing expression and the pained noises he had made not even yet cool to the touch. Tony's lashes fluttered as he tried to refocus, swallowing thickly, and he remained awkwardly tense, hot with resentment. It left Tony's voice a tight rasp when he finally asked, "Are you sure?," then coughed, shaking his head. "And the fear?" he pushed instead, trying to get some distance. They hadn't come here with the intention of making Jon worse.

Billy may be a friend, but Jon would argue that his presence is what he currently needs. He does, however, accept the invitation to lean against Tony's shoulder once more, frowning at recollecting what has happened - And what to make of it all, inwardly agreeing with Tony's observation. He should just head back inside and try to handle whatever is happening.

At the question about fear, Jon's brows pull together and he nods. "Pretty much the same. I... Saw it. Felt it. All of it at once and not only from the cave, but- It felt like all the terror felt by all living beings on the planet and it just-- It came crushing down on me. It was... A lot. Too much for me to handle. Like all that knowledge, I... just couldn't hold it in my mind."

Though sluggish as Tony tried to resist it, the impulse to pet reassuringly through Jon's hair was not one Tony had much power over. His fingers were tripping idly from Jon's temple around his ear as Tony considered the crystals and their resonance, as Cal had figured, and how the echoes for Cal, and the fear and knowledge worked as an energy source, quite literally for Jon. "You need a bigger battery," he muttered absently, "Or a safe way to discharge." That was true of the Iron Man, anyway, overloaded and unmanageable, but the armor was much easier to adapt. How did that translate to Jon's mind?

What Tony definitely should not have considered was how Jon and Cal could potentially manage it by sharing the load, because he definitely shouldn't send them both in there to be tortured just because he didn't like how thin Jon was. His hand dropped again to circle around Jon's wrist apologetically. Over Jon's head, the entire horizon looked hazy and imperceptible with the glitter reflecting over the quiet evening water.

"We'll figure something else out," Tony decided. "No loss, we're back to where we started. Now there's some rocks here that aren't very useful, great."

Hearing that he needs a bigger battery has Jon pause for a moment, then actually chuckle softly, leaning his head ever so slightly towards the fingers brushing through his hair. "Right. I just learn how to make multiple recordings simultaneously and ban it all on tape before the harddrive gets full." His voice fades off, along with the lingering amusement within it, a weary pensiveness taking its place. "Kind of wish that was possible. Would be useful, at least. Just redirect the stuff threatening to drawn your mind and--"

Jon shrugs, then sighs and at last glances out over the oddly sparkling ocean himself. "...is it odd that I've never been here? The beach, I mean. I grew up at the ocean and- How long has it been since I got here? A year now? And this... It's always been here. Never thought about it much..." Another pause, then: "Thanks for going with me. I- Actually had planned to find the cave on my own." Ant that wouldn't have gone well at all.

That didn't sound so outlandish to Tony, solidly within the realm of plausibly achievable as long as he was thinking about batteries and harddrives with just the small matter of limited human brain matter to work around, so he didn't see what was so funny. Instead, he bowed his head to kiss Jon's crown as he considered the psychic blockers, power inhibitors, mutant suppression techniques that might have been adaptable, if Tony had the means to produce them in the first place. Tommy would have to be pushed out of the forge.

"You don't have to do any of this stuff on your own, you know," Tony pointed out, since Jon seemed determined to do otherwise, between the boulder moving and scavenging around he was doing. "You, or Cal, neither of you should feel like you have to." Tony really was trying not to leave them feeling that way, though he wasn't very good at it, clearly.

"Listen, this place can be lonely, I know, boss, and there's--so much of it," he continued, not really meaning the place but the problem that they faced. "But we also got this chance to be able to do it together, and I know I'm better when I've got you, an' we got this beach here, n'..." He trailed off, losing his words and muttering before he managed to form the point he was trying to make between his brain and his mouth. Both Jon and Cal knew something about how these crystals worked now, was the point, and could share that, and that connection would be much more effective than either of them having a brain hemorrhage alone in the cave. And as awful as all of it was, right now Tony was sitting on the beach and watching the sunset with Jon.

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