sorry mario

[fe_male]

WHO: Tony Stark
WHERE: The Fountain, Blacksmithy.
WHEN: 25 Sept.
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Tony Stark.
STATUS: Open, ongoing. Like I'll ever remember to edit this once it's not.

---

ᴛʜᴇ ғᴏᴜɴᴛᴀɪɴ

He squints.

Both at the sunlight and the fact that the world seems to have rearranged itself somehow in the last little while since he most recently took survey of his surroundings, and he's not entirely sure to which direction things have swung but he knows he doesn't like it.

Level one, assessment. He's sitting up on the bottom of a probably-concrete pit outside, and he can hear wildlife. No, wait, not a pit, a fountain, unless one makes the argument that a fountain without any water is technically a pit anyway. "Somebody changed my clothes, sure, why not, that's not weird at all. That hasn't happened since like. Ninety four." Investigating the backpack tells him very little aside from the fact that someone around here apparently lacks forethought and that he's retroactively pretty happy this fountain is empty aside from one increasingly irritated engineer.

"Alright, I don't know what kind of game this is, but it's pretty crappy! Like, terrible. Duke Nukem wouldn't even touch this with a wavebird, and now I'm just talking to myself in a hole. Fantastic. I have red pants, a peacoat, and nothing to get out of here with."

Shouting into the void seems like potentially a Bad Idea, so instead he's gonna poke around and see if he can finagle something out of the pipework maybe. Probably with running commentary to himself.

ʙʟᴀᴄᴋsᴍɪᴛʜʏ

Well this is familiar. His hand releases the strap of his backpack over his shoulder and trails over the edge of a shelf. Tony hasn't seen much of wherever the hell this little place is - nothing even really indicates whatever country he's supposed to be in now - but he can't really say it looks that appealing. If there's a blacksmith, then this might be a little bit more rustic than he's comfortable with. Either that or he's found the last bastion of hipsters. That might at least explain the overalls.

Comments

i hope i don't run out of them

[fe_male]

Tony does notice that lag there, because she doesn't usually do things like that, much less visibly so, but he doesn't comment on it. Maybe later, but it's not necessary now - for all he knows, she's just still surprised to see him. He's certainly riding the wave of being surprised to see her.

The weeks thing though. That makes him squint for a few moments before he goes more or less back to his appraisal.

"Did you know Peggy Carter was here? Which is funny, because she's younger than I ever met her before. And it's definitely not been 'a few weeks' since I saw you back home." Tony doesn't like this place. He doesn't like it at all. He doesn't appreciate not being able to count on independent variables to remain true constants amongst the myriad of other things anyone has to account for on any given day. "Yeah. Your fountain is broken."

[taiyny]

There are three separate trains of thought there that Natasha can catch: Peggy Carter, he hasn't seen her in a while, and the fountain is broken. Two of those things she's aware of, and will get to in time, but the third...

"How long has it been for you?"

She's cautious, still not taking anymore steps into the building towards him. She still has residual hurt and annoyance from the last thing he'd said to her, even aware as she is that he said it out of frustration and his own pain. Everyone had been hurting after that fight. It doesn't excuse it, but — she understands. And she won't hold it against him, especially because it doesn't seem that he even knows he said it. It might be the sudden thrust into a situation that neither of them were ever prepared for in any capacity, but... She's not so sure.

[fe_male]

"Since I got here? I don't know, maybe an hour?"

It's offhanded, because he's investigating the bellows to see if it still seems operational. This mostly means making sure it can move and whatnot, because if he's gonna be stuck here, he might as well have something to do. Hopefully there's some metal somewhere nearby.

[taiyny]

"No," she says slowly, carefully. "Since you last saw me."

She follows his movement with her gaze, and finally steps into the blacksmith's, letting the door close behind her. He's being way too blasé about her to be still angry at her. Or even know why he should be angry at her. And that's got her more curious than anything, despite any lingering feelings of anger of her own.

[fe_male]

She's acting a little on the wary side, but considering he has no idea how long she's been here then maybe she has cause for it. He glances over for a second at the sound of the door shutting out of reflex, then back to the bellows for about two, then back at her again with a squint.

"Your hair - I went down to see if I could figure out a location for our newest villain du jour, so I'm not really sure. Couple of hours? It wasn't light out yet. How long have you been here?" Because that's seriously longer than it was the last time he saw her. She'd been rocking it way closer to back when they first became a team, in whatever cycle of short, long, short, long, she seems to enjoy.

[taiyny]

She glances down for a second at the hair (a little messy and knotted but still) hanging down around her shoulders, deep read and waving as best as it can without the help of designer shampoo, conditioner and a stylist. She even has a brief moment of deep longing for her salon; she is, by her estimation, a week overdue for her appointment, and she's needed a trim for a while.

When she looks back up at him, it's with full knowledge of When he is, and she sets her jaw, any lingering anger with him dampened and suppressed, because if she's not going to be mad at Sergeant Barnes for shooting her twice because for him, he hasn't done it yet—

Then she can't be mad at Tony for the verbal insult he'd hurled her way the last time she saw him because he hasn't done it yet, either. She wonders, idly, if that's how he feels now, anyway, like maybe it's something he's been bottling up long before the incident with Steve and that's why she's still cautious and suspicious when she talks to him.

"A few weeks," she repeats, one hand on her hip. "You're talking about Ultron, right?"

[fe_male]

Something about her understanding of the situation has changed when she looks back up at him, and his eyes narrow a little further as he tries to place it. Then she says weeks and they widen, to match how his eyebrows go up. "Yeah, I'm talking about Ultron. You already know about Ultron, and it's been weeks. Does anyone arrive here from a time that would make sense or, I don't know, make the whole forced abduction thing a little easier to handle?"

It's been weeks for her. That's a good sign. That probably means things go well. That or Ultron's become Skynet and they're living in a underground resistance in which case it's probably a bad thing that they're both stuck here. Although, granted, Aunt Peggy is here and apparently that didn't disrupt the timeline at all.

Another time. It's probably easy to see when his brain shifts gears back to the conversation he was actually having, and Tony tilts his head a little. "Where did you go?" he asks, still trying to decide if he actually wants to know the answer to the Skynet situation.

[taiyny]

"Lagos," she says flatly, because he knows about Peggy and he's smart enough (smarter than her, anyway) to understand about timelines and time travel, and he may not even get a headache after that. The hand on her hip rises to cross her arms, and she cants her hips to the side. An offensive posture, because he's inadvertently opening up wounds that were only just starting to heal (if not very well). She says Lagos, because that was the start of the downward spiral. It's also something he won't know about, and okay, maybe she's antagonizing him a little. She really shouldn't be doing that.

She huffs out a sigh. "I've been here a few weeks, Tony, but back home it's been over a year since Ultron tried to cause the second ice age. Time has no meaning here, so something that happened for me hasn't happened for you, yet."

[fe_male]

He leans back a little against the nearest table without really thinking about it, reacting to the waves of irritation peeling off of her right now. Anyway, she confirms she's ahead of him in the timeline, because he has no idea what the hell significance Lagos has on anything, and he'd assumed she was maybe irritated with him for Ultron - since. Well. Everyone was sort of irritated with him for that - but now he doesn't know.

Unless, hell, maybe the Ultron situation did go that badly. Maybe that is the issue. Now he's really not sure he wants to ask. Call him a coward, but she's between him and the door right now, and he doesn't really feel the need to have a pop reflex test.

Tony's eyebrows raise again a little at 'second ice age', but he shifts his posture into something more casual, tension he hadn't realized he was accumulating bleeding out of him with her use of the word 'tried'. At least his mistakes have yet to reach the 'global' scale in terms of repercussions.

"Yeah, I was getting that impression," he says, still trying to gauge the situation here. He's no pro at reading people like she is, but he's still not bad. "So you, Peggy - anybody else from back home?"

[taiyny]

"Clint, Sam, Thor," she says at first, and then pauses, hesitating. Like she doesn't want to tell him the next couple of people. She won't mention Frank Castle; it's likely Tony, like her, will only know him from the papers, anyway, and so it won't matter.

"Sergeant James Barnes and Steve are here, too."

She stops after those two names, like she's waiting for something, an outburst, a reaction, whatever. She's expecting something from him, even as she knows she won't get the reaction she thinks she might. He has no reason to be angry at Steve, and Sergeant Barnes—

She still hasn't told him, from when he's from. Neither has Steve. She knows neither of them won't, and while she doesn't know Steve's reasoning, she knows her own, and it's what keeps her mouth shut even now: Sergeant Barnes isn't to blame for the deaths of Tony's parents. Not really. And she doesn't know how Tony will react to that knowledge, either. So, for now, it remains secret.

[fe_male]

Jesus, the whole gang's here. Nearly. That's just going to get more confusing the more he thinks about it, so for the moment he'll put it in the background and let his subprocesses mull it over.

Whatever is happening in his future, if it makes her pause like that then he knows a couple of things:

1. He doesn't want to ask about it.
   
2. He's definitely going to ask her about it.

He doesn't know why he is the way that he is, but at this point it's really too late to do anything about it, so it'll just have to be another one of his 'charming' personality traits. When she does continue though, the news is vaguely surprising. "They found him? He get scooped up by some crabbing ship in the bay?"

[taiyny]

Natasha crosses her arms and clears her throat in a clear mirror of the time Happy asked her if booty boot camp was the extent of her boxing knowledge, and she takes a second to compose herself. Because he should know damn good and well where Barnes was at, and he doesn't, and she needs to remind herself of that. Because whatever it is that's dragging in Agent Carter and Sergeant Barnes from the 1940s and her and Steve and Clint and Sam from after the fight, and an Australian woman from the 1800s has also grabbed Tony from mid fight with a murder bot and so he doesn't know.

She has to keep remind herself. Because if she doesn't, she'll snap at him and walk out, and he doesn't deserve that. Not yet.

"Actually, he's from the 1940s. Before he even fell from the train."

[fe_male]

He squints.

Tony might even shift his weight a little, because for whatever reason even though Aunt Peggy came through at an earlier time-point, it's somehow weirder for Barnes to have done the same. No one's ever accused Tony of being entirely objective.

"That... Sounds fun to deal with. How's that working out?"

Is he potentially asking as a mirror to what he thinks might be his own circumstances? Nahhhh.

[vdova]

"It's working," she says with a minor shrug. "The girl who runs the inn is from the 1800s, give or take, and I think there are others from even further into history than that, although I can't be certain without talking to them directly."

Which she hasn't done. She's been too busy trying to eke out a living in a place where her usual skill set does her no good. She has her own resources, knows how to keep herself alive but it's not just herself she has to worry about.

"And there's no telling when we are. Everything indicates the possibility of the Victorian era or older, but there's no newspapers, calendars, books— nothing with the written word that would give us an indication of where we are."

[fe_male]

Well, Tony supposes that's about as good as you can get here. He's been here all of the length of a fire drill and he's already getting that vibe - and he acknowledges her response with the sort of nod and shrug people give when they're acquiescing to a point they don't have any further commentary on. "You catching him up or letting circumstance work all that out?"

The whole bit about the Victorian era or older actually pulls an audible groan out of him. Not particularly loud or drawn out, but definitely a bit more than a huff or sigh of displeasure, especially when coupled with the shift in body language. "Yeah, ye olde blacksmith was sort of pushing me in that direction, but I was really hoping this was just a charming little standing museum." There's the sigh. "There's seriously nothing written down anywhere? No natives?"