[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]

"...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.