[for Tony]

[daretodo]

"Yoo-hoo, anybody home?"

I knock on some piece of machinery with a stick I picked up on the way over -- just enough to make thing rattle. I haven't stopped by the scrapyard in weeks, too wrapped up in my own grief to care about someone else's, and it's guilt that I could be so callous that brings me out here today.

Whatever hell I'm going through, Tony's right there with me. We've both suffered a loss. And maybe it'd just be easier to let that tear our friendship apart, but at the moment, he's the closest thing to family I've got on this island, and I'll be damned if I lose someone who's still here just because I can't bring myself to make the walk over. We've been through too much already for that.

"Tony?" I poke my head around the corner, lifting up my messenger bag with my free hand. "I brought snacks."

Comments

[notawastedlife]

Tony was sitting in a sun-chair he'd constructed out of bits of metal and some fronds. It was holding up nicely. The things he'd made tended to.

He figured it was probably compensation for him not holding up so well. The goatee was a little frazzled, bordering on a beard. He had been sitting in one place for longer than was probably normal.

(Although normal for Tony was about a minute, sometimes.)

"...I'm listening," he said, waving to a nearby flat surface. "Just... over there."

[daretodo]

"You look..."

I'm not actually sure what he looks like. Unusual springs to mind. Rough around the edges. Strangely relaxed (which I assume means he's drunk off his gourd). Setting my bag down, I keep tossing him glances over my shoulder, trying to get a read on him, but maybe still too wrapped up in my own problems to get a good one.

I pull out a few containers and set up our sad buffet for two: pastries, sandwiches, fruit, and even a salad in case he wants to revisit his cow heritage. I nab one of the danishes and sit on the edge of the makeshift table, legs swinging.

"...like you're expecting a cabana boy. I think I passed one on the way here, you're in luck."

[notawastedlife]

"Passed one? You just brought me food, change outfits and we're good to go," Tony said, swinging his legs over and staring at the food like he was trying to work out what it was for.

"Please don't change outfits."

He speared a piece of lettuce and then stared at it grimly.

[daretodo]

"Aw, but my tush'd look great," I say, twisting my hips a little to get a look at my butt. The joke feels forced, but then, I'm a bit out of practice. I've barely socialized in weeks, though I did him (and everyone within a mile of me) the courtesy of showering within the past day.

"For the record, I draw the line at fanning you."

[notawastedlife]

"I'll get Dope to do it," Tony said, watching the litle robot dragging a wrench he'd thrown at a random pile of metal back towards the toolbox.

It hadn't really been the pile of metal's fault. It couldn't help that it wasn't suddenly a portal back home. And he probably shouldn't leave Dope to clean up, but, well...

...no one else to clean up after him, so much, any more. He realized he was just staring morosely at a robot, shook himself, and snatched a pastry off the makeshift table.

[daretodo]

That sad look of his is enough to kill my own sense of humor dead, but I fight to revive it. This isn't gonna work if we're both sad sacks, and even if smiling makes me want to claw my own face off right about now, it feels so disingenuous, I honestly don't know what else to do.

"Little fella's been getting his exercise, huh?"

I'm in absolutely no place to judge. My place is a disaster zone and it doesn't even have the excuse of being a scrapyard.

[notawastedlife]

"He always did, really, the wolves weren't going to do it," Tony said, casting a glance around to see if any of them were about.

Inherited animals. He'd always been more of a robot person. The issue was not so much a robotic person.

"Good work," he added, calling out to the robot. Which was itself as clear a sign as any that Tony wasn't exactly in his usual state.

[daretodo]

"The wolves. Right."

I've never been a fan of 'em, but for the most part, they leave me alone.

"Whatcha workin' on? Besides the... sun chair."

I have my guesses, but if I can get him on a tangent, then at least we can share the burden of avoiding akward pauses.

[notawastedlife]

"Tried to put the portal gun back together," Tony said, gesturing with a hand full of pastry. "Tore the portal gun apart because it wasn't behaving. Repeat... however many times."

[daretodo]

"Misbehaving like the last time or misbehaving as in not working at all?" I ask around a mouthful of danish. "Because those are two very different levels of misbehaving."

For one, the former's something I'd ideally like to be around for. If he's going to go swanning off into other dimensions, the least he could do is enact the buddy system. I'm not losing my best friend here to his own genius.

[notawastedlife]

"Misbehaving as in the parts won't fire back up, something fundamental might be broken," Tony said.

Well, that was accidentally too apt.

"Probably from shooting it that time. Have to find replacement parts. Or invent them. Or just redesign it entirely- maybe punching holes isn't the best bet. We didn't get here through a hole, no one leaves through a hole."

[daretodo]

"I've been researching alternative means of interdimensional travel," I say, grabbing another danish and biting off more than a mouthful.

"The Fantastic Four were really big on traveling through vibrational attunement. So, you know... Shrinking. I doubt the Microverse is accessible from the Island, but even getting somewhere where physics regularly works how it's supposed to would be a step up from this place." I shrug. "It's a thought."

[notawastedlife]

"...microverse?" Tony said, pausing in the act of pulling the pastry into halves to stare over it at Peter. "Shrinking? Like that bee lady? No."

Normally he'd be into the idea just on principle, because it was crazy and thus fun, or he'd want to know more about what the hell the microverse was, but it didn't seem like it lead... out. It was data, and while he could see that data was useful -- knew, deep down, that there was no fast solution -- he couldn't make himself care about anything that didn't have immediate applications.

He just wanted that fast solution.

[daretodo]

"O...kay," I say, a little thrown, but undeterred. It's not like Tony to say no to dangerous and insane science experiments, but I can get where he's coming from.

"Pym's kind of a joke, I get it, but his tech's seriously worth looking at, Tony. The guy can basically carry a universe in his pocket. A literal pocket universe. If we could compress time and space like that, it'd be possible to create a portal without having to punch a hole through the fabric of reality."

And if Pym can build it, I don't see why we couldn't. Even without a multi-million dollar lab.

[notawastedlife]

"Wrap up a pocket universe, unwrap a pocket universe," Tony said, halting his own urge to naysay it again, the impulse to say no to anything that wasn't just tearing down the walls.

If only, because as his words and accompanying gesture of first bundling up and then exploding an imaginary object in his hands, there was the potential for that.

"Do we even have the gear for that?"

[daretodo]

"No," I say on a laugh, shoving another piece of danish into my mouth and swallowing. "But when's that ever stopped us? We build it. There's gotta be enough raw materials to fake the stuff we don't have. Plus it means we don't have to put our trust entirely in a piece of tech that keeps trying to kill us."

[notawastedlife]

"Only tangentially," Tony said. "Don't blame the gun, blame the person who built the gun."

Or invented it. As the case might be.

Who was behind Aperture? Interesting question. On another day he might have cared, but it didn't get them out of here any faster.

[daretodo]

I'm not sure I fully buy that argument, but I'm not a fan of guns on their own, either, let alone people who regularly fire them at innocent civilians.

"Big words coming from an ex-weapons manufacturer," I say, giving Tony a sidelong look. "Save some self-loathing for the rest of us, wouldja?"

[notawastedlife]

"Haven't you heard? I'm not a big sharer," Tony said, nonchalantly taking finishing off his pastry and looking over the remaining food as if it held the secret to his next move.

Which it sort of did. His next move being to eat something else.

"So we're playing Rick Moranis. Maybe. If we can get the parts together."

[daretodo]

I roll my eyes. We're both selfish. Quick! Someone go get de Worde for this breaking news story.

"Or we could just stumble across Pym Particles and work from there," I say, squeezing a bit of danish into a tight ball before popping it into my mouth. "Not sure if that'd skew the science-vs-magic line this place seems to tap dance along, though. That was Pym's whole thing, yanno? Making science look like magic just 'cause it was so out there."

I pause for a second, something occurring to me only as I wash down the pastry with a swig of water.

"You, Richards -- heck, even me. Why do we invent something? 'Cause we need it, right? There's a- A problem we're trying to fix. We wanna make something easier. This guy? This guy used that big ol' brain of his to talk to ants. Who needs to talk to ants?! Nobody! He was just... Inventing for the sake of inventing. So I'm thinking maybe that's what we need. To think outside the box. Come at this sideways. There's no punching our way through this one. Which really sucks, 'cause I could really go for punching the hell out of something right about now."

[notawastedlife]

"To think outside the box by replicating his... box," Tony said. He saw what Peter meant, and he could trace the history of science as well as anyone. All the accidents, all the people who were trying to do something entirely different and inconsequential who changed the world.

He didn't know that you could do it on purpose, but he followed. The da Vinci system. Be interested in anything.

Maybe it did sound better than merchant of death. "We'll punch our way out of the box, fine. Metaphorically. Good... plan. Good lack of a plan."

[daretodo]

I've seen Tony in lower places than this, which is saying something. Seen him actually give up and tried to drink himself away. Most of the time -- well, kinda most of the time -- I don't dwell on the fact that I'm BFFs with someone who's probably the smartest guy in his universe, if Reed's not around.

But then sometimes he says he likes an idea of mine, and I'm a grad student all over again, even with all our history. Like I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that the Tony Stark approved of something. Maybe I just so blamed depressed I'll take what I can get. There's a sad thought.

"You think so?" I say, and realizing how much that sounds like I'm fishing for something, I shake my head soon after. "I mean, of course it is."

[notawastedlife]

"No fishing," Tony scolded, although he was watching Dope again, who was now attempting to sort some wrenches by size.

This meant that he'd dragged all the wrenches onto the ground, which wasn't exactly ideal. But again, he didn't have the heart to call him out on it.

"Stand by your convictions about... meeting ants."

[daretodo]

"We're not gonna meet ants," I say, rolling my eyes. "Probably. I don't know. I mean, I'd assume we're not gonna meet ants, but..."

But making assumptions about this place doesn't always go well for anyone.

"I got some schematics back at the house, based on published works the bookshelf was kind of to cough up after giving me a billion copies of that movie where we're priests. I'll bring 'em over next time. Thought you probably needed food more right now."

I'm really only eating to set a good example. God knows I haven't been doing too much better.