sixthiterationlogs | (204): Text me later if you aren't dead and wanna have a drink later

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(204): Text me later if you aren't dead and wanna have a drink later

WHO: Tony Stark
WHERE: Blacksmithy
WHEN: Prob like Nov 16 to Nov 23? Flexible rn until i get more input.
OPEN TO: Annie Cresta, Sam Wilson, others.
WARNINGS: I doubt it but I'll edit if that somehow comes up.
STATUS: Closed twice, open otherwise. not that. there's that much of a difference

Open:

Tony wasn't really sure why he kept coming back over here so often. It wasn't like there was anything to actually forge. He had a few handfuls of nails he could clean off and melt down - needed to melt down, really, since removing them from their previous embeddings had bent nearly all of them into being little more than gradual triangles if force were applied to the heads a second time. Nails though are still difficult to use without some sort of mould, although he was starting to suppose he could just try something to see if it worked. That would work better with the larger pieces, like the hinges, since they wouldn't have to be completely melted down to change their shape, since he didn't think he had all the tools for that anyway. Regardless, it wasn't like he had much else to do, beyond keep up with his hand to hand, attempt poorly to forage, and continue dismantling destroyed houses.

Regardless, he's here anyway. Probably attempting to repatch something that was previously already repatched itself but working at least well enough to be, you know, working. The whole place is generally workable but needs updating in many respects. In his mind at least.

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Modified closed to Annie Cresta:

It's the same thing except he has like. This big pile of nails he's sort of. Just. Staring at. He's not sure what to do with such a finite amount of metal to work with, and he really wants to make something, but at the same time he doesn't know what to make. He knows he can make whatever and just redo it later, but that actually - here - runs through resources that aren't as infinite as he's accustomed to, and he's working to keep that in mind.

So he's attempting to run through all the scenarios mentally, so see what. Would work best. It's... having limited results. Most of which involve him staring intently at a pile of bent nails because there's no one to talk to here like he talked to JARVIS, and there are no holograms to project his thoughts to, so everything has to be internal.

[ This is literally 'my character is x-ing by the lake come bother him but feel free to notice like. an unnecessary fire dying in the forge or tools that don't match sitting out if she'd notice that sort of thing. Basically everything here reeks of at least one project that abruptly stopped. With like. Several tools nearby and a bunch of nails. ]

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Modified closed to Sam Wilson:

He's not even been attempting to fix or use the forge recently. Instead, he's been steadily - when he can or isn't already working on some other project - attempting to dismantle the houses that were already damaged by the earthquake to a point where they cause more problems to fix than otherwise. Architecture was never his particular foray, but he knows enough about it to work with these - what can be removed now and potentially put back later, what can be removed and is too damaged to be anything but replaced anyway, etc.

Tony's making what appears to be one of at least a handful of trips - this might be the last one considering once he dumps his armload into the part of the floor he seems to be using as a dumpspace it starts to roll and blob into more of the walkway; tony promptly kicks it back into place, apparently assuming the given hiking boots are totally a match for boards with nails in them and whatever else it is he's grabbed at first glace.

He's actually crouched down and about to start resorting items just now. He picked each one specifically at the site, but now that they're here, they need redoing.

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The knock works pretty well for that, especially since he was in the middle of what is one of the more 'chill out for a minute and watch what happens' stages of what he was working on. It's been cold as hell, and he figured it wasn't a bad time to try and make some arrowheads out of the various bits of metals he'd pillaged from the more destroyed homes. If he's particularly adventurous he might try and make a knife, but he'll see how the arrowheads turn out first, considering he hasn't got moulds for anything yet.

So he's actually on the hotter side of things, and watching hot metal get hotter and trying to make sure the fire stays stoked well enough with this old equipment to keep it malleable for the length of time he might have to wind up working with it. He's not too bad - if you can make a mask, you can make an arrowhead, he figures - but it's been a little while. Although it had been many 'little while's between the last time he did all this and the time immediately before that, but he's not really trying to think about the last time he did all this anyway.

So maybe the distraction is actually welcome. Tony wipes off his forehead with the back of his forearm as he turns to look at who he's already identified, because it's just reflexive to look at her. "Arrowheads. Kind of boring, but in that whole retro, Urban Outfitters kind of way where it's still new? You hate using it, but it's still the in thing at the moment. I'd much rather be working on an automated drone that sends back information regarding the boundaries and constantly maps the apparently-shifting geography of this place, and could even provide helpful information by telling us exactly where it hits system failure, but." He shrugs a little bit, turning enough to locate and then pick up the closest thing to a ball-peen hammer he has access to. "I don't have any silicon."

She opens her mouth to remind him that she has no idea what he's talking about, but is beginning to get the feeling that he both doesn't particularly care and isn't liable to stop anytime soon. "I would have much rather something to fly over the canyons rather than my risking life and all my limbs," she concurs as she bundles her jacket a little tighter to her neck, wandering inside to investigate what he's been working on. She can't help her fond smile that she works to hide in her collar, thinking how very familiar this is. At least Tony isn't sending her away to fetch him disgusting liquid cheese so that he can concentrate.

"Can I help?" she asks, pointing very deliberately to the plate with her chin. "While you eat," she adds pointedly. "Don't think I'll let you go hungry."

"I figured you might. The Indiana Jones thing is fun for a little while, but it gets exhausting pretty fast," he says, as he realizes that he can't really do a whole lot of hammering if he's going to be having a conversation. Well, he can, and he would, but most people seem to find it pretty annoying after a couple of minutes and just leave.

So he looks back over at her in time to see and follow her gesture towards the plate of food he hadn't noticed she'd brought with her.

It's weird, to get a sense of not-quite-déjà vu - because the situation couldn't possibly have happened to you before, but you know one that was very similar to it, although not specifically. It only lasts for a moment or so, because it's weird and fleeting like a Skittles commercial from the early 00s; you have a general feeling, but you don't really know what to do with it until it goes away of its own accord.

Anyway. There's food, and he's apparently hungry so this is great timing all around. "With the arrowheads or the drone?" he asks, reaching out to pick up a piece of meat before noticing his hands are dirty. There's an attempt to wipe them off on his pants and he seems to be of the mind that whatever's still there is fine, since he picks a piece up anyway and starts eating. "Know where I can find vinegar?"

"Perhaps the inn or one of the kitchens?" she suggests. While her own hasn't been stocked with anything that would be useful in this instance, she still holds out hope that someone else might have the supplies he needs. She gives him a disapproving look when he uses dirty hands to pick at the food, but it's also not like she can offer him a better solution, so she'll have to let it rest as it is. "Is the vinegar for the arrowheads or the drone?" she asks, taking a seat in the makeshift workshop, feeling a wash of familiarity over her.

All that's missing is the overwhelming ego that seems to follow Howard Stark and his scientific ilk around (given how both Wilkes and Samberley had been so utterly similar when it came to discoveries). Honestly, you dangle the prospect of naming something in front of them and they go mad. "Do you think it's actually possible to get the drone working?" she asks.

He blithely ignores the look with the ease and practice of someone who has four decades of doing so already as he continues to eat, although assuming she did bring cutlery he'll start using that because it's just easier. "One of the kitchens in the fifty houses here? You guys didn't ransack them all already?" He supposes there's something nice in the idea that when new people arrive, they can pick out a house and it will have things in it, but still. It makes more sense to take out anything unique for communal usage and leave more general items behind.

"Vinegar's for the scraps," he says, gesturing vaguely with the fork to a small pile of metal bits that remain. "Bent, rusty - gotta clean 'em up. There's no rush though - there's other stuff I don't have anyway."

Tony pauses for a moment, presumably thinking about whether it's possible to actually make the drone but actually considering the hilarious improvidence of timing happening here. He makes his life better by removing the RT, and now he's stuck somewhere where he actually really needs the damn thing, albeit for a totally different reason than before. Fantastic.

"Not without... Basically look at all the things we have access to now, and I need the opposite. And a way to make a battery that doesn't immediately crap out if you hurt its feelings by staring a little too long. Does anyone even have a camera or some kind of radio?"

"They've been torn apart quite readily, but vinegar isn't exactly on the top of my list as far as things go," Peggy points out, seeing as blankets and other supplies top that list, given that she'd much rather survive and keep warm, especially with the winter coming. She reaches forward to eat little bits of food from off Tony's plate, seeing as she's the one who brought it there.

"I haven't seen any technology, not from my era or yours or even before that," Peggy says, though she'd give anything for a radio, some days. Eyeing Tony, she wonders if he really will be able to get anything going. If anyone is going to do it, she imagines it will be a Stark, won't it? "And if you had to make something with what you do have, what would it be?"

Tony considers the pile of what-he-formerly-would-have-deemed-trash-and-is-now-forced-to-accept-as-the-top-billing while he chews on another mouthful. Then considers everything else he has available to him within the village.

"A rocking chair for James Hetfield?" which sounds like a legitimate proposal he's thinking about making until he continues, "I'm not sure what we actually need against things we just want - are we trying to make a living here or are we trying to go home?" Because technically, yes, you can do both at the same time, but you need to pick one or the other as a main course of action, especially when your options are already so limited. "I would actually like to leave - weird - but I don't think I can just shoot my way out of this one. It's gotta be a group thing, all or nothing."

"Tony, I don't understand anything you say," Peggy remarks, a touch critical and slightly frustrated with his insistence to keep doing it. She gives him a stern look and lets out a long sigh as he talks again about trying to go home. "You know as well as I do that I want to get home," she promises. "And I've been trying my very best to find us a way out, but I haven't and I can't understand why I've failed again and again."

"If you could figure out a way to somehow track the ground we've been over before, it might help, but it seems even that can't be trusted," she says, thinking of Margaery and Kate's vanishing in the woods and how everything had seemed to move on them.

"You're not alone," she reminds him. "We all want to go home. We all have people waiting for us."

"Who was the heavy rocker back in your day then? The one that makes mom and pop tell you you're just listening to noise instead of music?" he sort of vaguely concedes, taking another bite.

As she continues, he listens a bit more calmly than he had been before, leftover energy from trying to make something work bleeding back into the gradual build up of the stuff he's got slowly increasing the pressure on him to figure all of this out. He has to figure this all out, he can't stay here; time dilation and chicanery aside, the world might be ending back home and even regardless he can't be stuck here. He doesn't do well with stuck.

He deflates a little, when she's done - not entirely, but enough - and sort of sighs. "Yeah, I know. Technically they might not even be waiting, on their end. That would be nice. Romanoff and Rogers are both here from after me and they didn't even notice I'd gone missing in their timeline. Of course, that also means there could be multiple timelines..." He trails off a bit to regather his thoughts from where they were scattering elsewhere. "I get the farming, I get the repairs, but why not an all out go at the border, all of us? Sometimes you have to take the risk." Despite the argument he's making, his tone and delivery suggest he already knows the reasons and is just... frustrated. The lack of options here, the lack of any ability to produce your own options, it's just maddening.

"I wasn't very much of a music person," she says. "I didn't spend much of my time in dance halls," she says. "Waiting for the right partner," she echoes old words that she doesn't ever think she'd say again, especially not now that she actually has a chance to see that dance through. At least, she would have the chance if ever she was able to find some music and some time not trying to survive. "As to the border, I've gone for it. Multiple times. The border keeps moving outwards," she explains, though she has no idea how that can be possible.

And yet, haven't her incidents int eh canyon been proof of that? "I don't understand how we can be here and not at home. Does that mean no one is looking for us?" she asks, a thread of worry hitting as she'd been counting on a search party from Daniel and Howard, at least from Mr. Jarvis in order to find her.

Wow, Tony's not even going to touch that bit of nostalgically familiar reminiscing with a ten foot pole. He gets the comment, and the meaning behind it, but he's just. Yeah, nahhhhh. Maybe later. Maybe never.

There's other things to address anyway. "How far outwards can it move if we keep going in a straight line though? Even if the land we're on isn't infinite, the confines of whatever physics-fucked space we are in is, or the boundaries wouldn't keep changing and putting us literally back in square one. We're not meant to go too far - what happens if we do?"

Tony simply refuses to accept that space can extend forever. He hasn't himself ventured too far out, but that's because he has no real reason to if he's doing it by himself. He's not stupid; he knows he doesn't have the skillset required to do the sort of potentially-long-term outdoorsmanning he's talking about. He's just surprised that everyone else seems to be content not to do the same as a group. They've surely been here long enough?

It's why he said you have to have a direction. Either they want to create a lifestyle here, or they want to figure out how to get home. In a situation like this, in his opinion as he's seen things so far, there is only one or the other, collectively. Individuals may have their own agendas, but as long as they don't all agree? They're apparently collectively okay with making a life here.

Anyway.

"I don't really get it either, but apparently it's happening anyway. I'm not sure how far ahead they are, but it's enough to mean something, and none of it's happened to me, and they didn't seem to remember me going missing and coming back from the world's shittiest summer camp, so." He shrugs a little bit, not trying to be unsympathetic but seeing no reason to sugar the news down. He'd been hoping someone would notice too, until he realised the futility likely involved. "I don't understand how we're here at all, but time is apparently about as much a factor as landscaping or a protest vote against the obvious prom queen."

"Clearly it doesn't mean much at all when it comes to timelines, given that I'm from several decades prior than anyone else," is Peggy's thought on the matter, "And I'm still no closer to understanding why myself and previously Sergeant Barnes were the only two from our time period where we've been privy to so many people from the future and from space."

"When I walk towards the canyon wall, it keeps expanding in front of me," she says. "You're welcome to come with me at some point if you'd like to see it for yourselves," she says. "And I would always love to spend more time with you," she adds, trying to add a little more guilt to her voice, even though she's giving Tony a fond smile. "Besides, once you have the drone working, you're going to find us an escape, aren't you?" she teases.

He'll give her a point about being super behind, and another for being so, although that's not totally what he was getting at regarding timelines. Though, if pressed, he's not sure what he's getting at with the timelines, so he's not sure how to address that at all. She's from a time before he knew her, from after his father had known her for years, if records and oral-history were anything usable, but this doesn't help him piece together why none of the people from the same world are from the same time. He has plenty of points to reference, but nothing thus far to connect them. Are they all from climactic points in their respective lives? Is each one of them from a turning point in the overall timeline as it stands? Are they part of an overarching relatively-inevitable-but-not-entirely series of events that leads somewhere catastrophic? He has no idea. That's the fucking problem. There's so many potentials but never enough to trail together any one singularly decent idea.

He's going to explode at some point. He can tell.

"There's not a whole lot here that seems to care about relative time outside of this reality." It's news though that Barnes is apparently gone - Tony had just assumed he hadn't seen the guy in a while, but he'd imagine the person living with the guy would have a better understanding.

"Expanding in the sense that you can visibly watch it do so, or expanding in the sense that you keep walking and things that seemed far away just stay far away? And I'm absolutely coming with you on a physics-breaking hiking trip. Count me in." The guilt is noted, and felt, thanks. It's vague, but he has enough of his own feelings towards her and his reaction to her - in his day - mental illnesses to get the adequate pangs she wouldn't even be aware of sending.

He does at least huff a laugh about the drone. "Yeah, sure. You guys just find me the parts I can use to craft a microprocessor or thirty, and I'll have us out of here before you can say 'interdimensional molecular proto-transport'."

She ignores the parts about the time aspects, because her mind is clever enough, but she's hardly equipped to theorize or make determinations about what's going on with the timelines that she would be able to offer anything valuable. She turns, then, to the question that she can answer. "Every time I'm out there, the distance continues to move. Without a compass, it's all guesswork as to whether I'm even heading in the right direction, of course, but the boundary keeps escaping me and then I'm pushed to a side and I hit a wall. Literally," she says, thinking of how nothing ever yields as escape.

"Maybe we ought to keep you to inventing something that can actually be done," she says, eyeing the smithy around them, hefting up one of the tools and using it as if a fencing rapier, setting herself at the correct stance before relaxing, setting it done. "Swords? Clubs, maybe? I'm a fan of using your own two hands in a fight, but your father was quick determined to equip people with mad new inventions that often doubled as weapons."

At least talking about geography - while still irritating as hell here - is multitudes easier than trying to talk timelines. Although honestly, nearly anything is easier to talk about than timelines, whether you're talking about personal experience or your favorite sci-fi tv show.

"There's got to be a way to rig up some kind of compass," he says, in the tone that people use to indicate they're both skeptical and disappointed you haven't thought of this already. There must be a reason she hasn't, but that doesn't mean he's not going to ride her about it. "Also, 'literally'? Are you being like, shoved into rock faces, or what?"

Anyway. He watches her fencing stance demonstration with vague amusement, manfully not letting himself be sad again about the state of the tools within the shop in general. He's totally okay with them, okay. He even manages not to have any visible reaction either way when she mentions his dad, and weapons. "I've got a couple ideas for arrowheads," he starts, moving a couple things that don't really need moving but work better with the organizational system he's come up with in the last seventeen seconds. "Clubs are a bit on the obtuse side of whatever physicalities we seem to have in abundance though."

"Well, I did hit the rocks fairly hard when the rope snapped when I was exploring in order to find a way out, yes," Peggy replies calmly, seeing as she hadn't been anticipating that, but had managed to come face to face with exactly that in her determination to get out. "Ideas for arrowheads," she echoes. "How could they differ?" As far as she imagines, an arrow is just that - an arrow - and there's very little that you would do with it otherwise.

She settles back in a seat, moving his plate about slightly as she regards him. "Do you want me to talk about your father around you?" she asks, having stormed right into that without delay.

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(204): Text me later if you aren't dead and wanna have a drink later

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i'm sorry my tags keep getting so embroiled in his thought process

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