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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[Oh Christ Tony what is going on with you right now, DOES CHARLES NEED TO MINDWIPE SOMEONE.]

What happened?

I've been making friends with a supervillain. [There's... almost an edge of laughter to his voice right now]

And apparently Pepper's here because I end up dying. Again. Flying a nuke into space.

[He needs a drink. So. Fucking. Badly.]

Come to my room, I have something for you. [It's a small consolation, maybe ~~and don't go next door, a very angry mutant lives there~~, but he'd rather have this conversation in person, and he does need to hand over his Iron Man helmet to him.

Also Charles might have some Scotch lying around.]

You don't worry telling someone their fate could ruin destiny?

Do I need my rape whistle? [... Oh wow, he's in a bad mood. As if it wasn't obvious before.

But hey, what the hell. He needs to work off his frustration. And moving definitely helps that. So... he's getting up and starting the trek over.

Inventing more-so. Working on his suit even more than that. But he'll take what he can get.]

If it's going to happen, it'll happen anyway. Might as well be able to brace yourself for it.

Pretty sure this place doesn't care about destiny, anyway.

No. The door's unlocked. [Charles doesn't sound mad, or even really annoyed, because he knows better than to rise to Tony's jabs, especially when he's upset like this.

So he'll sit and wait, Iron Man helmet sitting on his desk waiting for its owner to come retrieve it.]

I care about destiny more than you know.

It can be changed.

[There's an urgency in his voice - not quite fear, but it's less passive than Castiel usually is.]

The future can be changed. Destiny can be averted, if circumstances are right. I was there.

The angel's right. One misplaced word can throw off a whole future.

[He knows this, and hates it.] Even things that have to happen even if you don't want them to.

[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?

There was never a game. If there was, I never wanted to play it.

...It wasn't my idea, not to tell you. I'm sorry.

[Hey this is how the private locks work, right? Pepper's not stupid.]

Tony, what's ... What's going on?

So, hey. Here's something to think about.

Say you have a bomb exploding in front of you. You're in the middle of a desert, a bomb goes off, and it sends pieces of metal right into your chest. And then - here's the kicker - you're kidnapped by people who were originally hired to kill you. That sounds like a pretty fun no-win situation, right?

But there's this doctor there who's good enough and crazy enough to shove a magnet inside your chest and hook it up to a car battery. And somehow, three months of loose connections and torture later, you still manage to build a suit out of box of scraps right under your captors' noses and bust free.

Yeah and, see, that's not the end of it. Because now you're in the middle of a desert with no water, no food, no bandages, no protection from the sun. The middle of Afghanistan with no way of signaling for help, no way of knowing where the nearest town is. And still, within hours, you're found by your best friend and a full military convoy.

[He pauses, just for a quick second]

I'm destiny's bitch. It doesn't matter if I'm told things. I was saved for a reason, I'm here for a reason. I'm meant to die somewhere, some day. Destiny's just saving me for then.

[Congratulations, Cas. That's more than he told the company therapists about his time in captivity.]

Edited 2012-07-11 05:11 (UTC)

[Castiel absorbs this story, though his look is noticeably more intense than it usually is. His speech is hard and clipped. Mysteriously, there's a low rumble of thunder from somewhere.]

Everything happens for a reason. Everyone has their place to live and to die. And the universe corrects itself so that these things happen the way they should happen. There are stories that are written that must be told, and people who must do great things and people who must do horrible things.

But fate is not overwhelming. When pressed too intently, it can snap. Those destinies can be averted. Things in place for millenia are put off despite everything pointing to it must happen now .

I averted the Apocalypse. The sworn vessel of Michael never took in the Archangel. The world did not see salvation despite the signs, despite the Devil walking the earth, despite the four horsemen. What was written did not come.

Do you understand?

Edited 2012-07-11 05:18 (UTC)

[Pepper he could just kiss you - if he wasn't already on his way to Charles' room]

Nothing, it's- really nothing.

Just some jackasses deciding not to tell me a few really important things.

I get the nuke. I don't care about the nuke. I die like, once a year. It's how I'm here.

[Breathe, Tony, there's no- oh you know what, yes. Yes there is.

There is every point in snapping at Steve right now. Every goddamn point in the world.]

How did Coulson die?

[There's a quiet sigh.]

Loki speared him through the back. [A pause.]

I never got to sign his trading cards.

[Snapping at people is exposing too many things, right now. He's being too emotional. He was hit where it hurt and hit hard. Tony doesn't trust people easily, doesn't like most people, and after his dad raising Cap up on a pedestal... well.

So he's trying something else, trying a different approach, trying to get himself back under control, before he tells someone something really personal. (As if what he said to Castiel wasn't just that.)]

Is everyone on this ship an expert in destiny or temporal whatever?

Edited 2012-07-11 05:34 (UTC)

Right. Because I really give a crap about his trading cards.

[He is trying so hard to reign himself in right now.

It's not really working.]

So Loki, the guy I've been talking to, killed someone we both know and you decided it was a perfectly logical thing not to tell me?

Definitely feeling the teammate love over here, Captain.

Natasha decided that, not me.

[He's bristling a little, now.]

I wanted to. Her whole thing doesn't exactly sit right with me.

[He's narrowing his eyes for a second, pushing past his initial disbelief with the whole apocalypse thing being brought up again - because he's apparently seen magic, now - and giving Castiel the benefit of the doubt.

The guy definitely looks serious enough]

Yeah. I get it. But you're kind of playing into my initial point here.

If you'd never gone down and messed around, where would you be? Apocalypse central, or whatever the hell comes after that.

Whether or not destiny sucks or can be bent, telling people crap that's important to them is better than just letting them screw themselves over.

A person might keep such a secret because for certain events, a deviation from the proper timeline can cause a massive rupture in reality, damaging paradoxes, and general chaos across the web of time.

And for other events, nothing happens and the universe continues to unfold with barely a hiccup. It takes an expert to know which is more likely to occur and so it's best for non-experts to avoid playing Russian Roulette with the timelines.

For the record, yes, I am an expert in temporal mechanics, and temporal intervention in particular.

[Uh-oh.]

What?

A lot of 'em. [Bluntly honest. He's on a ship full of people who have had their pasts, futures, and vague alternate scenarios meddled with.] But if it's about something personal, it might just plain be something they didn't want to talk to you about. Who wants to have to tell someone that everything they ever wanted out of life is gonna go wrong?

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