sixthiterationlogs | Look out to the future, but it tells you nothing

WHO: Tony Stark
WHERE: Tube Room in the Bunker, Inn, Forge
WHEN: September 3rd onward
OPEN TO: Initially Bucky Barnes, then Everyone
WARNINGS: Descriptions of Dissolving, Canon typical Violence, Language, Blood, etc.

Tubular Trauma - [Closed to Bucky Barnes]

Oblivion isn't as comforting as Tony thought it might be. That drifting, aching sort of silence that seeps in like ice to strangle all sensation and thought? Normally didn't include quite this much pressure. Like the armor locked up dead around him, but with a single terrifying exception he's never had water between his skin and the circuitry. It makes drifting awake less of a vague meandering towards consciousness and more of a snapped, panicked shot of adrenaline to the base of his spine. Because this? This isn't Titan. It's not stale air stinking of ozone and ash it's a tube.

Full of fucking water. Whatever's just beyond is a bit beyond his capacity to grasp seeing as the first detail that sinks in isn't that he's in soaked scrubs, floating in a tube. It's the slow coil of red swirling in the water from his left side and- that? That's going to be a problem. The patch job didn't hold through whatever the ever loving fuck brought him here- why being fully submerged makes this easier, he doesn't know. Too confused to panic, he'll think- as soon as he gets out. Though trying to scrabble for a seam in the tube is A) useless and B) slow going with one hand, the other pressed tight against his wound, for all the good it does in keeping the exit wound from bleeding.

Protip: It doesn't.

Got an Inn

Adjustment after a shock is- well. It's a thing. A shock to his system, a shock to the senses, emotional fatigue, whatever. The finely tuned engine that is his brain keeps trying and failing to roll over, the dull click click click of failing spark plug echos in his teeth. Failure's one thing. It wasn't an option, and they'd failed and that- he'll. Cope. Somehow. Not much of an option. He'd given himself a moment, maybe ten to breathe and think and wonder and he'd- woken up here. In scrubs (his stylists would kill him, Pepper would kill him) and they're not there, he knows they aren't there, but he can't help but keep picking at his nails. Digging out bits of ash and soot that don't exist anywhere but in his memory along with the still palpable crumpling of an adolescent arachnid that-

Yeah, no. Not thinking about that.

Heels of his hands pressed to his eyes Tony tries to just. Breathe. Eat the damn lunch he'd come to get and figure out a step two. Or. Shit, at this point? He'd take a step one. Maybe another soak in the hotspring so his ribs and torso stop feeling quite so delicate; he's been over this whole thing for years Revisiting this particular sharp edged vulnerability? Not his idea of fun.

Rebuilding, Rebranding, Reforging

The best part about waking up here, Tony decides, is the built in ability to figure out what the 'best' option is for him, outlined in a shade of blue so damn familiar it aches a little. As long as he's stressed out of his mind- which is all day, every day, since he was fucking twelve- and without direction (which is every hour since the snap) the universe which screwed him over so spectacularly through circumstance and poor cosmic shuffling throws him a bone. A glowing line not entirely unlike a flight path that guides him from wherever his latest round of trying not to rattle apart while left alone with his own sharply spiraling thoughts that circle 'we're fucked we're fucked we're fucked' on a nigh infinite loop was (usually somewhere not too open, usually with his back pressed so hard to a wall it's hard to breathe but he needs to know he can see everything that's coming at him or not) to...a pretty well dead forge. It's antiquated like the rest of the village. Clean, empty, quaint.

Dead coals, unused tools, and just getting everything cleared out to the point of use would take a day, finding ore or iron would take gifts or mining but- he can start doing something. Here's the best place for him and it's true, he can feel that garrote of tension fit to strangle start to go loose at the idea of a project. It's direction. It's something productive, something he can lay his hands on and...tinker. Bandage around his ribs or no, Orders for bedrest or no (he has them, he's ignoring them, some shit doesn't change), Tony busies himself with getting the forge cleaned up and organized, rough charcoal sketches dusted on the wall as he plans the first of many projects that still...won't be enough. Not to keep him busy. Not to keep him sane. But for now? it's as good a place to start as any. First order of business: Stockpiling iron to work. Which...that'll take some doing, won't it?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ He manages to not tell Rogers to go die in a fire- and he'll take that as a win. Whenever he's from, whatever's going on? He's not about to poke at it. Let that be Barnes' issue. Right now? He's got a million other things he'd rather be doing. Reliving Peter's vanishing is more desirable than spending time trying to not make a scene with Rogers in public. There's too much here to unpack and it's a container he'd rather leave locked in deep storage.

Rogers? Seems like he agrees.

For the better, really. Tony remains silent, eyes dropping back down to his plate as soon as he's sure Steve's gone back to his routine of...whatever he's doing. Doesn't matter as long as it's not involving him. ]

Look out to the future, but it tells you nothing

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