aggravating | 8th Command; Voice

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*post: 008

8th Command; Voice

There's this old adage, Bargians. Secrets, secrets are no fun. Unless you are a part of one. I'd kind of like to add onto that for a minute. So, uh, bear with me.

There are a few things that yeah, they're supposed to be kept secret. No one and their aunt Martha care about your latest bowel movement or who you had a crush on in the third grade. Seriously, they don't. Unless you're loud, obnoxious, spray tan like hell every chance you have, and get into cat fights over who gets the last can of soda. Those are fine. As are the family secrets, things like divorces, fights. I'm not saying "Spill your guts, Bargites, 'cause it's just not faaaaaaair~!" Those aren't the types of secrets I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the secrets that have to do with someone else. If someone knows something about your future that, you know, might be good to know for your own peace of mind, your own well-being, then hey. What the hell are you keeping it from them for? Because I pretty much guarantee that when they find out - and they will - things will be even worse than you imagined.

And yeah, for the record? Lies of omission totally count.

[Private to Natasha]
Coulson's dead, huh? Or did Rogers leave that out of his debrief?

[Private to Arkady]
Gorgeous, I needed to be drunk yesterday.

[Private to Charles]
Give me a reason to actually keep giving a shit, Prof. Because apparently even if I work to come back to life now, I just die again later.

[Private to Steve]
So. Rogers.

Coulson's dead.

I flew a nuke into space.

Loki's a fucking supervillain.

Game over.

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[He's there in just a few minutes, hands shoved in his pockets, annoyance and rage etched pretty clearly onto his face. Pepper - God, it had been good to see her again, don't get him wrong - but the things she'd told him, not just about himself... God. He doesn't even care about his own death.

It's everything else that's put him in this mood.

But either way, he's still managing to saunter into the room like he owns it, annoyance and boredom clear as he looks Charles over, scans the room, and-]

..... Oh. God. [You can be saying whatever you want, Charles, he's... really not listening as he just launches himself at the helmet, reaching up inside it and yanking a few wires out, shoving them down the front of his shirt and connecting the helmet to its power source, making a practically sexual noise when he sees the internal lights flicker on.] Baby, I missed you. You have no idea.

[It would be almost comical, if the rest of what was going on here wasn't so grim. Charles had been as much in the dark as Tony about his future - how could he know? The file he'd been given stopped at the point of arrival on the Barge, with no notes about what to expect in the future - and he's not sure how exactly to proceed, but he's not about to let that uncertainty show. He's supposed to be the one with the answers, here, and he'll try to give them.

So he lets him have his moment, smiling a little, before going on an investigation for that scotch.]

Would you like a drink?

[He's flicking the faceplate up as he walks over to the edge of the bed, settling himself down in order to get some of the circuitry open inside the helmet, tweaking things around to try and get it to full functionality even without the other parts of the suit.]

I needed something to drink before this crap even started.

[Charles lets him fiddle, bringing over the bottle of Scotch and some glasses, balancing them carefully as he wheels himself over to the bed. He pours Tony a glass and hands it over to him.]

Would you mind telling me what happened, starting from the beginning? [Which in some ways, is both a sign of Charles hoping Tony would be honest with him, and showing that there's some manner of trust between them, that he'd rather listen to him explain rather than just read him and take the information without permission.]

[There's a little whir coming from inside the helmet, and a static strewn voice that sounds out a quick "data recovery in progress, sir. memory capacity reparations initiated." in a slightly computerized British accent.

He glances up at Charles, reaching over for one of the glasses and pouring them both a glass before making a face and... downing everything he'd poured for himself in a few, quick gulps.]

Yeah, sure. Apparently Loki - the guy that speaks like he's straight out of Hamlet - is the big bad evil Cap went home to fight. Rogers knew this since Loki got here, Natasha figured I couldn't keep a secret, so they didn't even try and play damage control when I talked to him. Which is apparently a thing I have, now. Befriending people that would turn around and kill me if they got too bored.

Might as well try a friendship with your anger management buddy.

[Yup, pouring himself more scotch]

So Loki's evil, Nat and Steve voted me off of trust island, Pepper's here to bring me back from the dead from right around where Steve's at which, okay, yeah. Annoying. Deal with all this here and now to come back from one near-death thing only to, probably, go through it again in two years. Sucks.

[He downs that second glass before saying, quieter;]

People keep dying.

Edited 2012-07-11 10:41 (UTC)

[Charles listens patiently, taking a sip from his own glass and watching Tony's consumption. While he certainly understood wanting to get drunk after hearing all this information, he wasn't sure he loved the idea of him getting wasted and then grabbing a communicator to yell at Steve or bother Erik or whoever his latest 'person I shouldn't be bothering but am anyway' was.

Considering the last time had ended pretty badly for everyone involved, he wasn't in a rush to repeat the incident.

So he listens and watches, and takes it all in. It occurs to him that he doesn't actually know who Natasha is, making a note to ask about that next, but the quiet sentence afterward makes him stop, concern pretty evidently etched into his features.]

Who?

[When Tony drinks off a bad mood, things tend to just go from bad to worse. But at the end of the day, he pukes and passes out and wakes up not remembering any of it, and having slept off most of the initial rage and hurt. And hey, if he's still feeling it, then it's just another wonderful repeat performance.

He's a beautifully emerging alcoholic.

His face kind of steels up a bit, closes off at the question, though. And damn if he isn't reaching over for more alcohol]

Coulson. Phil, apparently. He was just... an agent, I guess. I've worked with him. Twice. He helped save Pepper during the whole Obie thing, covered it up.

He was... [He struggles for a good few seconds, trying to come up with just the right word.] ... becoming a friend. Was a friend, if Pepper's word is anything to go by. Which it is.

[He recognizes the name from his file, and while he isn't actively reading Tony's mind, it's still hard not to pick up on the waves of emotion rolling off him, and, well, it feels like he understands. He's lost friends, or people who were becoming friends, too.]

I'm sorry. [What else can you say to that, really? It wouldn't bring him back - although there's a part of Charles that's tempted to point out that if Tony graduates, he can make a deal for Coulson's life - and any platitudes were out of place.

After a quiet moment, he finally spoke again.]

Did Captain Rogers explain why he kept all this a secret from you? [Really, he could guess, and honestly, he didn't blame him, particularly. While Tony's situation was obviously incredibly different from his own, the bits and pieces he'd learned about possible futures he had to look forward to were less than pleasant, and he really didn't want to know any more about it. It was hard, coming here thinking you'd be able to change your fate and discovering that nope, you were doomed from the beginning and nothing you were going to do was going to change anything.

Not that he'd really accepted that as a fact yet, but it was still hard to have people like Wanda here telling him what a monster he was going to grow up to become.]

[Unless Charles stops him? Tony's reaching forward, for the bottle of scotch, to try and pour himself another drink. Even if he's thinking it might just be better, at this point, to take a few swigs directly from the bottle. Still, he just shrugs at the apology. Letting it wash over him.

He's heard it before. The apologies. Heard it when his parents died, when Obie'd died. Heard it time and time again when he'd done the hard thing, stuck his own neck on the chopping block to stand for something he knew was right, that the rest of the world just had their heads too far up their asses to see. He accepts them, smiles for them, voices his appreciation, even. But the words never do more than roll over him. Familiar and empty.]

The only explanation he could give me was that I'm not the best liar.

[Which... okay, yes. True. But god damn it. He's so sick of being judged on his past, stupid decisions by people who's opinions actually matter. And while he hadn't known Rogers before the barge, before here... hadn't even known he was alive... he'd grown up being compared to him. The mythical, majestic Captain America lingering in the back of his dad's head. Made larger, more perfect than life, or so Tony'd thought. But then he'd met Steve, and wouldn't you know it. All the thinly veiled disappointment, that his son couldn't live up to the man he'd known, had helped create... all of that and Steve really had been just as his dad described him. Perfect. The golden boy. Loved by everyone just as much as Tony was hated.

My greatest creation is you. Hah. Tony could practically laugh at those words, now. The closest his dad ever came to giving him a compliment, and he hadn't even called him his son. Hadn't said he loved him. He'd just been proud of his creation, his investment.

But as perfect as Steve was. As noble and all American as he claimed to be... apparently Tony was just that horrible that even Captain America couldn't trust him.

... Fuck he needed to be drunk yesterday.]

[Alright Tony, first rule in bullshitting Charles is stop broadcasting how miserable you are like a radio tower, because while he's not picking up specifics, and he hasn't put the bottle away yet, he's sensing enough to get the gist. And man, Howard Stark really did a number on you.]

Stop. Captain Rogers- [Even when irritated with him, he would probably never be Steve, because yeah, he was Captain America, Charles had had the comic books and trading cards and everything too. :|] Is a human being, and he made a mistake. He isn't perfect.

And you aren't horrible. [He was difficult and aggravating, but Charles had seen actual horrible people, and Tony was not one of them.

It felt a little bit like trying to reassure Alex again, if Alex was older and from a background Charles felt like he was a little familiar with. So maybe not all that much like Alex.] Now, I don't know what exactly motivated him to keep this all a secret in the first place - and quite frankly I'd think him doing something like this proves irrefutably that he isn't the perfect human being we were led to believe he was as children - but beating yourself up about his bad decision isn't going to accomplish anything.

[Honestly, the number Howard did on him didn't stop there. That... is the tip of the iceberg. Tony is a mess of issues even he doesn't fully realize are there. Things that have happened to him over the course of his life, little betrayals, the way he was treated, the way the public image was always hammered into his head - stand straight, chin up, don't show any weakness, Stark Men are Made of Iron - ... there's a slew of issues that Tony will have to spend the rest of his life struggling with.

It's just a matter of seeing them as issues. Of admitting they're even there to be worked through.

Either way, it's taking him a moment to pull himself out of his mind at that comment, the one that didn't seem to make sense, the one straight from his mind and-- ah. He grins, tight and forced]

You could make a fortune with that. Get a turban, crystal ball, dig on in and tell people what they want to hear. Your wife? Yeah, don't worry, just because she has a supermodel of a personal trainer, she's totally waiting at home for you, and not bumping uglies at the gym.

[Changing topics. Distracting. Self-preservation techniques, gut-reactions to when things start getting emotional, start getting too close.]

[Charles isn't so easily deterred, although there is a moment where he almost wonders which he prefers, someone who leaves when they don't feel like talking (like Erik), or someone who just deflects and tries to distract people from the real issue (like Tony).

They're both frustrating in their own way, although for now, he's grateful he doesn't have to go chasing after him or convince him to come back. There isn't the same kind of implicit trust between them that there was - had been - between him and Erik, so he knew it would have been harder to get him back and talking about it.]

I'm not just telling you what you want to hear, Tony. I'm a telepath, I've seen plenty of deeply flawed people, but I've only ever met one truly horrible person, and you don't even compare. [He'd been inside Shaw's mind, he'd seen what he thought, and he'd held him down while Erik shoved a coin through his skull because he knew that Shaw would kill him if Erik didn't back down, and he knew Erik wouldn't, and he'd been with him when he died because the pain was so intense he couldn't pull back.] You aren't horrible. Not even close.

[Tony's level of skill in topic switching borders on a doctorate, really. He's been studying the art since he was a kid, with some of the best masters in the subject.

Which is why, even as Charles switches back to the original topic, he is definitely not giving up that easily. He just wants the drinks being offered. Wants to lose himself and his sobriety, to tip over the edge and forget. Not sit here and hash things out. Which is why he's just topping off his glass again, taking a big gulp and reveling in the burn as it slides down his throat.]

Not me, but seriously. Teaching positions last what, a few years at most, unless you keep signing away your life to a typewriter and pushing out publishable papers every few months? You ever need spare change, seriously invest in a crystal ball and a turban. Can you do an Indian accent? I mean, you already have British going for you, but if you can pull off exotic...

Edited 2012-08-09 12:30 (UTC)

[Charles just shakes his head, laughing quietly, a bit exasperated.]

Something tells me I'll be alright, without turning to cheap theatrics. [What with the family fortune, and everything. Granted, building a school for mutant children and teenagers to grow up and study at wasn't going to be cheap, but he'd worry about that particular hurdle when he got there. And he could always churn out some best selling books if things got really desperate.

He was still smiling a bit, phrasing the question conversationally, like they were just chatting and nothing at all unusual had happened.]

Are you feeling any better, or are you just trying to be evasive?

[He's grinning, something in-between an actual smile and what he normally pushes on for the press. Wide and cheap and so obviously fake it almost hurt seeing it reflected back at him in newspapers, news broadcasts. It's a weird tongue in cheek sort of expression. Like he has a secret he's going to take to his grave, but he's way too amused with dangling it right in front of Charles' nose, just an inch out of reach.]

Not getting in that easy, Charles. It'd take the fun out of it.

I suppose it would. [He still sounds a little exasperated, but there's some humor there. It's, again, a challenge he's willing to embark on.

And while he is getting something he wants out of this, if Tony graduates, his motives aren't entirely selfish. While he certainly understood and agreed that Tony needed help, he wasn't someone who deserved to be locked away here forever.]

Who's Nat?

[He's just grinning, taking another sip of his scotch, waiting as Charles thinks, trying to see if he can feel something in his head shifting, but... yeah. Nothing. It's weird.

But in the end, he's snorting, closing his eyes for a second and thinking back. Natalie Rushman walking in with Pepper, the lingerie catalog, her taking down Happy, seeing her dressed in leather and answering to Fury, stabbing him in the neck with a needle. Natalie. Natasha. Rushman. Romanoff. The Black Widow.

Oh, wait. Oops. Nicole Reese. Oops?

... Yeah, no. He's not even sorry right now.]

You know, I'm still not sure on that one.

[Considering this all had been a fairly horrible thing to have dumped in your lap without warning, Charles really couldn't blame him for quasi accidentally blowing her cover. She had, after all, allowed him to befriend someone who murdered a friend and tried to take over Earth (which still sounded a little absurd to him, and while admittedly, he didn't have much ground to stand on when it came to what was normalcy, stopping nuclear war seemed a bit less like something you'd see in a movie.)]

I'm not sure if that answers more questions than it raises. She's an inmate, then?

[There's a point where Tony gets enough alcohol in his system that he can block out traumatic events of the last few weeks perfectly. And he is at that point. Who cares if Steve and Natasha used him? Who cares if he was befriending a psychopathic murderer? Who cares if most of the people he even remotely trusted on the barge turned out to be absolute jackasses?

Not him. He has Pepper and brandy and a Warden actually awesome and dickish enough to get him drunk in an attempt to get him to talk. As much as that should piss him off, it really just impresses him.

He's messed up.]

She's calling herself a Warden, but screw that. Rogers told me who the rest of the Avengers were, and I refuse to be the only one on our Island of Misfit toys messed up enough to be labeled an Inmate.

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8th Command; Voice

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