abraxaslogs | closed | what if this storm ends?

[ The last thing he sees is her face.

There's not – there's not much going on in there, between blood and skull and grey cells turned black. Air rattles in his throat. He says her name.

Her eyes meet his, at the end of time. Dark webs grow from the edges of his vision. A little girl's face smiles up at him. She'll be okay, he thinks – knows. It might be the voice in his ear, the last twitch of his mouth, the green stone seared into his hand.

He rests.

He opens his eyes.

For a minute, he doesn't move. He breathes, shallow, no strength in his lungs. His arm's numb, where it lies beside him. He rolls onto his back. The bed's wooden frame creaks. He raises his hand and sees small ridges and lines, embossed by the moonlight streaming in from the open window behind him.

He blinks slowly. Flexes his fingers toward his palm. Half the room stays dark. ]

–

[ The knocking starts at three in the morning. ]

Steve. [ Taps, thuds, uneven in intensity. His voice low, strangely measured. ] Steve, it's me.

[ The door opens. Tony winces away from the lantern light, as the fingers of one hand dig into the forearm of the other. ] Shit – hey. Hey, uh.

[ A latticework of scars extend from under his collar, up his neck and over his ear and cheek. The lantern's flame reflects in one of his eyes more clearly than the other. ]

You got a sec?

[ As soon as the banging starts at the door, Steve is up and out of his bed. He takes just a second to process the time and the intensity of those knocks.

It can really only be Tony, and while it may not be abnormal for him to be up at this hour, the way he's knocking means there's something more to this. Steve braces himself, even as he briskly moves out of his bedroom and for the front door. With everything that's been happening lately, he's already deciding what the worst case scenario could be. Maybe Cadens has been attacked this time.

He wrenches the door open. Tony's there, as expected. What's not expected is the odd scarring that snakes up his face, all too easy to see as he jerks his head away from the light.

Those scars. The dead eye. Steve's seen this before. Not just the once, but in restless dreams. His stomach bottoms out. He's heard this could happen, saw the evidence of it in Strange and Wanda, but he wasn't expecting it like this.

He pulls the door further open and takes a step back, nodding. ] Come in.

[ While he takes a second to process that there's a dead man at his door. ]

Cool. [ Tony crosses the door's threshold, with more of a stagger than a step. His hand tries to find the edge of the small table by the door, swipes at it couple of times before he grips its edge. He blinks at the room. It's – weird, just like the workspace in his living room, his scuffed tools on the floor, his half-wet cloth at the washbasin. Remains of a life lived yesterday, five years ago. ] Sorry, I didn't – I mean, I did. Know. That you were asleep.

[ His head swims. He winces. Like it's all – like a dream. An old dream he used to have, and then life moved on, and he forgot. He had a family. He held his daughter in his arms.

His head snaps up. ]

She's okay? Morgan. She's– [ his voice breaks, ] okay?

It's fine. [ Steve has an idea of what it's like to wake up and find that time has passed you by. Tony is sort of experiencing that in reverse right now, or so he imagines. He can't actually guess at what it feels like, at how disorienting it might be. He can forgive the intrusion — this isn't something that could wait until morning.

He shuts the door behind Tony, who's barely moved from the threshhold. Steve's about to offer to get him some water, or guide him over to the couch so he can sit down, but then that question comes like the crack of a whip. ]

I— [ Of course that's what Tony wants to know. Morgan was his entire world, both the reason he'd refused to help them at first and why he'd ultimately changed his mind. ] The last thing I remember before Abraxas was your funeral. She was there, she was...

[ He trails off. It seems wrong to say "okay," when she'd just lost her dad, but she also wasn't in danger. ] She's got a lot of people looking out for her.

[ Your funeral. It floods back to him, because it's not – this isn't new, is it? He knew this, thought about it, saw the little flickers of pity in people's eyes when he asked questions and got answers he didn't like. He'd... hated it. More than anything. Knowing where his story ended, before the curtain call. All while stuck in some period-piece purgatory, just a man in a cell, waiting for death, but also – life.

They won. They're okay. She's safe.

He exhales. ]

Yeah. [ He rubs his new bad eye with the back of his wrist. ] Pep's great. She'll do great.

[ She will. He knows that, at least.

He takes unsteady steps toward the couch, then drops into it. His gaze fixes on a wooden knot in the floor.

He'd hated it, knowing where his story ended. But there had also been haziness to it, a sense that maybe that ending belonged to someone else. That his sacrifice was noble, and necessary, and therefore would hurt less.

But it doesn't. ]

[ There's no doubt that Morgan will have plenty of people to take care of her, Pepper aside. The turnout for the funeral had been proof enough of that, and while not everyone there had necessarily been a close friend of the family, Steve's fairly sure that they'll weather the storm.

Still, there's no filling the space that someone like Tony Stark leaves behind. His ghost will always be hanging over Morgan, but that's something that they both already know. It doesn't need to be said.

As Tony gets himself settled, Steve moves to the small kitchen area to get him a glass of water from the tap. He joins him on the couch, handing the glass over as he sits.

Now he can get a good look at the scarring, and while it isn't as bad as it had been in the aftermath of that fateful day (an image imprinted into the back of Steve's mind), it's still not something Tony can hide. ]

How are you feeling? Physically, I mean. No one's built to take on all that power at once.

[ Obviously. It had killed him, except here he is now, and what does that mean? Shouldn't they take him to a doctor, at least? ]

[ Tony grabs the glass without looking at it. He takes a swig, but his throat stays dry. ]

Uh – fine. [ He nods, gaze still on the floor. ] If you ignore the tinnitus and the disfigurement and the general – [ he motions toward his eye, ] splotchy haze, but. Y'know. Compared to cardiac arrest, I'm. Pretty good.

[ Doable. Livable, unless someone tells him otherwise.

His mismatched eyes wander up and around the interior of the living area – the wood beam ceilings, the burning stove, the smoke-stained brick walls. There are a thousand questions on his mind – did they do it? Did the world keep turning, with four billion people back on it? Did playgrounds fill, did people cry, did they walk on into the dawn? It all bunches up in a knot right under his ribs, but one rises, quietly, above the rest.

What now? ]

[ It's unlike Tony to not look someone in the face when he's talking to them, and yet he can't seem to hold Steve's gaze for more than a second or two.

But he's also come back from a place that he was never supposed to, and Steve has some idea of what that's like. How adrift you feel, like you can't get purchase on anything no matter how hard you grip it.

He'll still insist on some sort of medical visit in the morning, for all the good it'll do.

Realizing that Tony's taking in the room like he's seeing it for the first time, Steve remembers that he's got five years of memories layered over the few months he spent in Abraxas. He lets out a low breath and straightens on the couch, clearing his throat to grab Tony's attention again. Before he drifts too far. ]

I don't know how well you remember, but... last month, there was the attack on Libertas. You got Sam's wings operational, we went to help however we could. I was gone for two weeks, picking up supplies from the Solvunn border.

[ Like it or not, life's still being lived here. Tony's going to have to make sense of that somehow, even with everything else buzzing in his head. ]

[ What now?

It thrums through his head, in time with the ringing in his ear. When someone comes to an end, that's supposed to be it, full stop. There isn't supposed to be another side and – like, okay, maybe to some people there is, but one, he'd never been much for that, and two, he's pretty sure there isn't a religion on Earth that preaches an afterlife where you sleep in a brick townhouse and pay rent to a guy named Butch.

But – that's irrelevant, isn't it? It doesn't matter what it sounds like, what matters is he's here.

And they're not.

He sucks in a breath. Flexes his right hand, feels cold stiffness in its joints. He'll never touch them again.

Steve clears his throat. Tony's head snaps up and he looks at him, takes in the words – slow and steady. Sees the little dumb eyebrow crease Cap gets as a side effect of emotional constipation.

He exhales. ]

Yeah – jesus, [ he scrunches his face, yanks backward, ] you get to business fast – hi. [ He blinks rapidly, waves a hand in front of his face. ] I'm alive, by the way.

[ It's often easier to focus on the facts in situations like this, to lay out what's in front of them like a mission briefing of sorts. Steve knows he often falls back on that when he isn't sure what else to say, or how it'll be received.

But Tony has now experienced everything he's experienced, more or less. That means he remembers that resentment is corrosive. That means he remembers how they'd rebuilt a bridge in New York, 2012.

It should make things easier moving forward, but right now everything that's going on here is still confusing as hell.

Even so, Steve lets out a little scoff at Tony's remark. ] Yeah. I've been processing that for months now, remember. [ His eyes narrow then, as he continues to study the patchwork of scars on Tony's face. ] You know, I thought the Singularity pulled you from an earlier point in time because it couldn't do... [ He lifts one arm, makes a vague gesture to Tony in general. ] — this. But I guess not.

[ So what changed? Was there any deeper meaning behind it, or was it just some unknowable monolith acting on whims? ]

Edited 2022-10-27 22:46 (UTC)

What, bring me back from the dead?

[ If he says it enough times, it'll be less existentially terrifying. Right? Right. Tony exhales, drags his hand down the side of his face for about the twentieth time since he woke up. The little ridges of scars still feel strange under his fingertips.

He drops his hand, blinks hard, looks back to Cap. Cloth bunches where his fingers dig into his pantleg. ]

It's – who the hell knows what it is. [ His foot taps, agitated, against the ground. Normally he'd get up and pace around the room, but his head's already spinning even without grappling with his sudden loss of depth perception. ] And meanwhile, I've got five years shaved off – I checked, I can tell, [ he adds, tapping his left arm, ] missing a couple scars from a cat that Morgan made us foster – Whiskey – long story, it – she–

[ He's never going to see them again. He's never going to see them again. He's never– ]

Hey, [ he gets out, a wheeze of air to break the haze. He reaches over and clasps Cap's shoulder. ] Sorry, by the way, about the uh. Bullying. Over bygones – I mean, I don't regret it, to be clear. But you'd already done your time. So.

[ Tony has the scars from his death, but not from the five years prior to that? Steve squints, not sure what would explain that anomaly, but it's true that he isn't seeing the five years of aging on Tony's face — only the markings left by cosmic stones.

This isn't really his area, either. Tony needs someone like Bruce or even Stephen to talk him through this. One isn't here and the other is going to require a whole lot more work.

As Steve tries to process all the things he never really learned about Tony's life after the Snap, the things that never got talked about because they weren't talking period, he starts to see the signs of panic rising up in Tony's one good eye, in his voice and his faster breathing.

Steve stares down at the hand on his shoulder and then shifts, facing Tony more directly so that he can stare right into his face. It's still a clear memory, the way he'd asked do you trust me? when they'd been clear out of options, and how readily Steve had replied. ]

I had. [ His mouth twitches with a smile as he gives a dismayed shake of his head. ] But it also meant I'd heard it all already. Starts to slide off your back after a while. [ He hadn't even been expecting an apology.

Either way, he knows he needs to keep talking to stop Tony's thoughts from taking him over the edge of a cliff. ] Either way, it's good to have you back. How else am I gonna make rent?

Dunno, figured Wilson would jump at the opportunity, [ Tony gets out, a kneejerk riposte to Cap's transparently make-you-feel-better comment, but – it's enough. His breath evens out. His fingers unclench. He's got feet on the ground and air in his lungs. Right now, at this very second – that's enough.

It's enough.

He looks back to Steve. Same dumb eyebrow crease, now paired with the saddest boy scout smile he's ever seen – and he's witnessed some doozies. For some reason, that's funny to him – in a way that makes his mouth twitch. Makes him smile. ]

Good to be back, for the foreseeable purgatorial future. [ Steve's known him long enough to recognize the sincerity under his smartass words. He offers a hand. ] Captain.

[ Something's still screaming inside him – intermittent muscle clenches in the pit of his stomach, telling him it doesn't matter. Won't matter, without them.

But they're okay. He saved them, all of them.

Don't waste it. Don't waste your life.

He didn't. He won't. ]

[ The fact that Sam would have somehow jumped to his aid and figured out a way to make ends meet with these townhouses aside, Steve doesn't want to think about what it would mean if Tony vanished from this place the way some other Summoned have.

Would that be it? Would he just be gone? Permanently, this time?

The foreseeable purgatorial future, as he calls it. This place is what Tony has, for better or worse. It's good that he isn't alone here, a stranger in a strange land, but has at least a few familiar faces around him. It leaves Steve at something of a loss about his own place here, and what it's for.

He stares down at the hand for a few seconds too long, then reaches out to take it. He feels the unevenness on Tony's skin from the scarring and wonders if it's sensitive to the touch now. But all the same, his grip is warm. Alive.

All that aside, it's good to be on the same page again — for all that resentment to have finally seeped out of them like poison from a wound. Steve's gaze flicks up from their clasped hands to Tony's mismatched eyes, but he doesn't flinch. ]

We really should get you to a doctor, in the morning.

Edited 2022-11-11 01:09 (UTC)

[ When he finally shows up at the workshop, it's with wire-rimmed sunglasses and a distinct slouch. He ambles around the edges of the space, poking at new rigs and an unfinished chassis like he definitely didn't go incommunicado for several days in a row.

Finally, he approaches Viktor where he's working at his desk. ]

Hey. [ He clears his throat. One side of his face is angled more toward Viktor more than the other. ] So I've had some time to, uh. Think about it, and–

[ He twists his mouth. ]

The capacitor for the S.A.V.E. magic-synergy system could be more efficient. Subrouting the excess charge is – so 2018, I'm thinking we rewire it through the outer panels so we can take advantage of the airflow system – more consistent wattage.

Edited 2022-10-24 01:53 (UTC)

[Sure, Viktor is curious, but he's also worked with Tony long enough to know that an absence of a few days is probably nothing to worry about. They both have their own projects, and operations, and Viktor would be something of a hypocrite if he grilled Tony about his every activity, especially when he's keeping so much of his own work away from prying eyes.

So when he stumbles into the workshop, looking more than a little worse for the wear, Viktor initially doesn't think much of it, though he is slow to answer, like he's not sure where this is going.]

It does tend to overheat.

[Viktor jots down a few notes, and then finally looks up from his desk. ]

Anything else?

[ Tony fidgets with a couple of components on the table, grabs a detached ball joint and twists it around in its socket. ]

No. Actually– [ he tosses it back on the table, ] yes – turns out I might be here on a little more of a permanent basis from now on. I mean – this... steampunk world, not. Your extremely untidy desk.

[ He rubs the back of his hand and then turns toward Viktor. Frowns. ]

Hey. You doing okay?

Edited 2022-10-26 03:52 (UTC)

Not really.

[But that's just his general baseline, which should not be a surprise. Viktor says it casually, as if he'd just been asked about the weather. How he's feeling is not necessarily the important thing here, not when it's obvious that Tony is clearly dancing around something.

He sets aside what he's currently fiddling with and gives Tony his full attention, eyebrows raised slightly at whatever it is he's implying.]

What do you mean?

Right. [ Tony watches Viktor for a second, the way he fixes his eyes on the problem in front of him with singular focus, the almost-imperceptible tremor in his hand as he rests the component down on the desk. He's not really sure what answer he expected – Viktor's never been one to dance around his particularly shitty state of physical affairs, and definitely not when Tony's the one asking.

Tony could be evasive, he thinks. He could try to grill Viktor again about his conversation with Strange, which is sure to put him in a bad and/or annoyed mood all over again, and detract his attention from the obvious. But–

There's a reason Tony came here first, after everything. To Viktor. ]

Can't go back. [ He says it lightly, shrugs, like it's an incidental little fact. ] Unless someone's figured out a way to spontaneously regenerate necrotic tissue. I guess. Listen, I hate dragging things out, so–

[ He reaches up and yanks his sunglasses of his face, revealing – at least a little better – the damage underneath. He raises an eyebrow, bisected by several small scars. ]

Does "death" club look the same as the "dying" club, like – do you get a break on membership fees, or...?

Whether or not any of us can truly go back is debatable.

[Yes, Viktor is aware of the Summoned who truly vanish, but without evidence, they can't necessarily assume that they are returned home to their proper worlds, or even correct point in time. The summoning ritual is obviously imperfect, so it stands to reason that any reversal of it would be imperfect in similar ways.

"Returning" in the sense that some summoned have described experiencing further events along their timeline seems more likely, and Viktor is about to say as much when Tony removes his sunglasses. He understands that Wanda had...visions, or a dream, of things she did at home, but Viktor doesn't recall any actual physical changes. His eyebrows pinch together.]

What happened to you?

[Might as well just ask. He seems to get what Tony is implying, but Viktor needs to hear it, to know exactly what he's dealing with.]

Edited 2022-10-28 15:13 (UTC)

Long story. Well, let me – I'm. Going to grab a seat.

[ Tony grasps the back of a nearby chair and yanks it in front of Viktor's desk. It's hard to ignore how Viktor's eyes flick between different parts of Tony's person, like he always does with a new problem – analyzing, assessing. Knowing him, he's probably already noticed the matching scars on the back of Tony's hand, as well as the fact that it doesn't seem particularly impeded in its movements – mostly just stiff joints and numbness, pins and needles sometimes. Thank god.

Tony drops into the chair. He leans forward. Fidgets. ]

Went home. And yes– [ he hisses, before Viktor can cut him off, ] I know what you're gonna say, but I was there, Vik. For five years.

[ Five years of incomprehensible grief, of unimaginable joy. They made a life, the two of them, and made it work, in the ashes of what once was. There's now a catalog of Firsts in his memory, each more precious than the last. First blink, first smile, first step, first word, first time he picked her up off the ground and felt weights fall from his shoulders, and he thought to himself – maybe this is okay. To be happy. ]

We had the small unresolved business of saving the universe, though, so, um. [ He rubs his eyes. ] A new venue presented itself. Time travel. I invented time travel, by the way, and–

[ A decade ago, that would have been the pinnacle of his work, but right now it's just a footnote. He drops his hand from his face. His blurred vision clears up on one side. The other remains as blobs of light and dark. ]

That thing, that everyone told me was gonna happen? Where I die for the infinite cosmos?

[ He gestures at himself, palms open. Twists his mouth into a wide, strained smile. ]

There's no real way to tell.

[He'd been inclined to believe that most of it was just a Singularity-induced vision, but Tony seems to be physically affected. Viktor has never heard of or seen this before.

It's very tempting to launch into an argument about how true time travel is impossible and Tony is full of shit, and what he actually invented was probably just a way to go reality hopping and leave a messy amount of branched realities in his wake. But that's clearly secondary to, well. Everything else. Viktor lets Tony finish and then takes a moment to formulate the next thing he says.]

What you're describing is...in line, with what others have experienced. [Home, and time passing, and no recollection of Abraxas. Waking up as though no time has passed. To remember dying, however, is probably jarring. It changes the game. Makes Viktor wonder how much is real, and how much isn't. If a true return home really is possible, in some way.] What I haven't seen before is--are these physical effects. How are you feeling?

Edited 2022-11-01 23:19 (UTC)

I can tell, [ Tony mutters back, more a prayer than an argument, as he scratches the side of his neck. But he lets Viktor finish, because unlike most people, he's someone whose opinion on the matter Tony actually respects.

Even if he's still going to fight him on... everything. ]

I'm fine. Relatively. [ He shrugs, with the weight of someone who knows he'll have to answer the same question a dozen more times in the coming week. ] Basically blind on the right, hearing's at sixty percent – but from what I remember, it... Arm was basically charcoal – cardiac arrest, brain damage – probably. I– [ He raises his scarred hand, flexes its fingers. ] It was. Bad. Of the not-good variety. This is peanuts, in comparison. An echo.

[ And yet, his body hasn't aged since yesterday – since five years ago. And neither have his... memories, in a way that fluctuates and stutters and coalesces within streams of time flowing in opposite directions. Tony woke up this morning with a band-aid on his left hand – right there, from a burn he got while helping Jayce out in the shop a couple of days ago. Jayce, whose face and personality he had forgotten for five years. Jayce, who he remembers with fresh, perfect clarity.

Maybe that's the other reason he's here, after grounding himself with faces from home. He just finished jumping from 2012 to 1970, and – this is still weirder. More disorienting. Confiding in a forgotten friend. ]

Can you?

[Viktor doesn't say more than that, however, knowing it will be enough, eventually. Tony is many things, but he's not an idiot. He might be riding on emotion right now, but given the uncertainty of it all, Viktor is sure that reason will win out. There's simply not enough evidence, especially given the unique powers of the Singularity, and the sway it holds over them.

The physical effects, however, are compelling. An echo seems to be an apt descriptor.]

We should run some tests. [What kinds of tests, however, he's not sure of, though perhaps with Viktor's abilities he might be able to at least pick up on some kind of magical signature. Determine just what, exactly, the Singularity might have done to him.] I'm sorry. I wish I had better answers. What will you do now?

Edited 2022-11-08 17:39 (UTC)

Yeah, [ Tony replies, toothlessly, to the "tests" comment. Viktor's trying to couch it in the pursuit of science, but he can hear it – the same concern as in Steve's voice just a couple days ago. We should get you to a doctor. It's what Pepper would want – did want, every time he came home from his latest life-or-death struggle. This time, it feels – unimportant. Superficial. Like the damage is obvious, and tangible, and already done.

Like it's nothing in the face of the real issue. The real loss.

He swallows. Shakes his head. ]

Live, I guess.

[ It's thoughtless, how it comes out of his mouth – bitter. It's only a second later that it hits him.

He raises his head. ]

What... [ He exhales. ] What do you try to do? Day to day.

[Isn’t that the question. Viktor isn’t even sure he knows the answer, or, at least, an answer that will help Tony. All he can do is work, so that’s what he does. Perhaps he’s afraid that if he stops working, the rest of him will follow, and then all of it will have been for nothing. Maybe he won’t accomplish anything in the time he has left. Viktor finds it unbearable not to try.

None of that, however, is a comfort. He doubts that Tony would be honestly asking if he was looking for something to placate him, but they know each other too well by now.]

We do what we can to make things better in the time that we have. Anything less is…unacceptable.

[He doesn’t go so far as to say that to do anything less is failure, but the implication is clear. Still, it’s not lost on Viktor that this is not an apt comparison, and he decides to make that known.]

Technically speaking, you now have all the time you want, as long as you can make peace with the fact that it will be here, in Abraxas.

[Viktor hasn’t decided whether he wants to accept that for himself or not.]

Back home, Jayce was…occupied. [Torn away from their work. Caught up in politics and making decisions that were actively detrimental to Zaun, and betrayed their shared convictions. Romantically involved with someone else. The unique circumstances they’ve found themselves in here—the ones that allow them to more thoroughly work on a cure and the ones that allow them to be together—simply do not exist in Piltover. That fact is not lost on Viktor, and he thinks that Tony might understand, now.] I was working on the Hexcore by myself. In some ways, I’m thankful for the opportunities afforded to me, in this place, but I don’t belong here. This isn't something I can decide for you.

[Viktor doesn’t say it outright, but the implication is likely clear—he's biased, and might be willing to give up everything he has here, given a real chance. If it means making a difference for his people. Tony will make a different calculus, if he believes he has nothing to go back to.]

closed | what if this storm ends?

steve rogers | cadens - townhouse

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viktor | cadens - rio workshop

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