[It's not quite an admonishment, more a calm surprise that she's finally unearthed him. The compound is a vast, open place, but there are still so many places to slip off to. Steve has been slipping off to them more often than he used to, but Wanda had already found everywhere to hide within a month of arriving.
There's a storm outside, one of upstate New York's spring thunderstorms, and she knows if she went outside, the ground and the air would smell freshly scrubbed and clean, but behind the windows, there's only the rain pouring down the glass.
The latest search for his friend has come up empty, all the leads dead ends. Maybe she should leave him. But she would not be a very good friend if she did.
Instead, she crosses over, slipping her shawl off her shoulders and setting it gently around his, before looping her little finger through his, and standing to watch the rain. They don't need to talk if he has no words. She knows.]
[Two weeks have passed since the Captain had spirited them away from their jailers and their floating prison. Two weeks away from the world, tucked up in Wakanda.
It's at least one week too long. She explains, and the king is, if not understanding, at least accommodating. It's not so difficult to make her way back to New York, and Romanoff has taught her about blending in. She takes time to pause and stare up at the building, the smooth facade stretching up to the sky. This was where the Avengers had first fought together, standing between the world and the forces trying to destroy it. She and Pietro had watched, like everyone else. She had seen what he'd done. It hadn't mattered at the time.
She knows the way into the building, a back entrance that means she doesn't need to move past the security detail at the public entrance. She only needs to speak to FRIDAY.
It's been years. He might not remember. He might not respond.]
[Tony really needs to uninstall a few of FRIDAY's humor algorithms, because telling him that there's a collector in the common area's living room, here to collect a few minutes of his time, he almost panics.
And then he realizes what she means and he really does panic.
It's his own damn fault, setting the codes, the safeties, so many safeties, so many exploited loopholes, so many places to disappear, to never be seen at all, all put in place specifically to protect his frie-- allies? Friends. If he only ever admits it to himself that's not pathetic, right? They're his friends. Or were.
Anyway.
He considers stalling. He knows how well that will go over.
The elevator opens with a ding and Tony emerges, hands in his jacket pockets, gaze outward and searching. For the briefest moment he stops, remembers, hears the echo of his nightmares given voice. He lets it all out in a huff, trying for a laugh. It falls so very short.]
[It is...not an auspicious beginning. She doesn't know how she'd wanted this conversation to start, but not like this. His laugh has her taking a half-step back, his discomfort almost a physical push.]
Stark.
[She doesn't come any closer, waving an absent hand at the ceiling, then remembers herself. From anyone else, that's an idle gesture, but she can bring down buildings with a motion like that.
She laces her fingers together, twisting them, locking them into place. Not a threat. She's not here to be a threat. She wants to look away, or turn and leave and forget about this, but—no. No, she was an Avenger, and so was he, and that still means something.]
[He hides the curling of his fists in his pockets, spreads his jacket open with a motion somehow mimicking ease. But he's a little frozen, himself, couldn't move forward if he wanted to, rooted. He doesn't flinch at her gestures, his gaze never leaves his face, but his breath holds til she stills. He doesn't even realize.
His quiet laugh is a little more genuine when she questions him.]
No.
[He hadn't even thought to.]
Feel free to ask her, she obviously won't deny you.
[She has one question to ask, and one confession to make. It might take a little longer than four minutes. Especially since her mouth has gone dry now, and his attention is...difficult. He's afraid. They're all afraid of her. They think she can't tell.
Her eyes drop and sweep away, crawling back up the wall without seeing it.]
Vision was cooking. For me. I was going to help him make paprikash. I wanted to go to the store, and he would not let me leave. He said it was because of you, what you had told him.
[Now she looks over again, and she does look angry, but it's a banked, injured anger.] Why did you tell him to keep me there? Why did you not tell me to stay?
[He waits, and watches, and listens, and he doesn't know where this is going or how the hell it even started, until suddenly he knows. And something breaks, but it isn't a snap, and he doesn't tense, doesn't brace for it.
It's almost like he deflates.
He pulls his hands from his pockets and crosses his arms for a moment, squeezes, uncrosses. He wishes he'd walked just a little farther into the room so he'd have something to lean against, but no. He'd left himself wide open. In every aspect. He asked for it. And this was not what he'd expected.]
That's what this is about? You came here to ask me--
[He drags a hand over his mouth, as if that's ever effectively shut him up.]
This is going to sound really insensitive, but mostly I did it because I wasn't sure how you'd take it from me. If you would at all. You trusted him, he likes you, it made sense at the time. I didn't think-- [he cuts himself off with a sharp, short bark of laughter] --didn't know. I didn't know it'd get so bad.
[And he's rubbing a hand over his face again, his eyes, scrubbing, and then suddenly his attention is fully, 100%, unflinchingly on Wanda.]
I just wanted to keep you safe and I didn't think you'd believe me, but I hoped you'd believe him.
I could not take it from him, he did not tell me! Do you know how it felt, to think I was trusted, and then to find out again that I was not? I wanted to try to be normal for him!
[It comes out before she can stop it, and now she unlaces her fingers only to wrap her hands around her arms, as if Stark's computer cannot keep the inside of the building at the perfect temperature at every moment.
What does she feel for Vision? She hasn't found a way to put it into words yet, but in the time it's taken her to try and figure it out, they've grown comfortable. There is a closeness there that she hadn't expected. Or there had been, before she had turned on him. But maybe he forgives more easily than most, even if she isn't certain he knows how to forget.]
[His head cocks to the side, processing, he can't help it. That confirmed a few things. Raised more questions than it answered, but it answered the important ones. None of those answers were comforting.
For a moment he wants to reach out, because he recognizes that panic. Recognizes knowing you've let someone so much closer than you meant to and how absolutely lethal it is to realize you've misplaced your trust and affection. How debilitating it is to be reminded you're human. How some people seem so much more than.
His expression is infinitely more kind than he knows she'll appreciate, but it hurts. He hurts. It's a selfish pain, he's claiming pain that doesn't belong to him, but when has that ever stopped him? People in his proximity get hurt. Whether he personally deals it or not is irrelevant, it might as well be his fault. Probably is. Usually is.
He has no idea what to say.]
You are trusted. [His lips quirk up at the corner and he blazes through, quiet and low in contrast to her outburst. Like all the fight he might have had left is just gone.
There's another huff of laughter, void of any humor.]
Just wanted to keep you from being locked up for your own good.
[And he rolls his eyes up and can't seem to pick anywhere to level his gaze, settles for out the windows, into the open nothingness of the sky.]
You're not exactly in the best company to pretend to be normal.
[It's soft, when the answer comes, quiet because any louder and her voice would shake.] I wanted to try. He is so kind.
[Now she moves, slow and stiff as if all her joints ache, each swing of her booted feet taking her closer to the window until she can put a hand on it and stare out, the other still wrapped around her stomach to hold herself in. She can put her back to him. It doesn't hurt to do that, it doesn't make her skin crawl to be exposed like that.
What she wants to say next...there are a few things. She could be angry, tell him that locking her up for her own good had been what he'd done when he'd appointed Vision as her glorified babysitter, or that it hadn't mattered what he'd wanted, that he hadn't known it would go bad the way it had. None of that will help now, and saying it might not matter.]
What happened in Lagos. What I did. Trying to help, doing what I thought needed to be done and watching it go...so wrong... [She tucks her hair behind her ear, not looking at him, not even at the faint reflection in the window, and her voice is even lower now.]
I didn't understand before. How much it. Sits. Inside you. Like a stone.
[He feels the earth sway beneath him and for a moment he actually believes the floor is going to give out. But it doesn't. And somehow, he stays standing, wondering if maybe reality itself shifted around him.
Because Wanda continued to rip his balance from him, again and again, his tenuous, hard-won balance. His reality had never been so flexible til she'd gone and tap danced through his deepest fears.
And now... that... that sounded like an apology. Understanding. Common ground.
He'd never wished it on her.
His gaze remains on nothing but sky, though he claws at something tickling his cheek.]
[The way her shoulders curve in when he answers is less like defeat and more like she's drawing up her remaining strength, curling around the hot bubbling regret inside her. No, it won't get easier. She's watched him for long enough. If it got easier, she would have seen it in him.
It's a stupid impulse. It's weak. He's going to reject it, push it away like he pushes away every gesture, even from his friends. And she is not a friend, is she. Not trusted, whatever he says. He's afraid.
She still lets her hand drop back, swing back toward him, held low with fingers spread wide, not a trace of red dancing between them, her other arm motionless, tight across her stomach where the stone lives now. He won't take it. But maybe it will be enough to have offered it.]
[He knows what it cost her to reach out. How much more it costs her to reach out to him.
To give when he's already taken too much from her.
He's not afraid of her, not really. He used to be. Before he finally accepted he was really just afraid of himself. Always had been. Always will be. Just couldn't stand knowing someone else knew it now, too.
So he reaches out, takes the steps, closes the distance, and laces his fingers through hers as he joins her at the window. Still staring out at nothing. Feeling everything.
He wants to laugh. Or cry. Or crack his forehead against the glass. So he just stands still, hyper-aware of how small her hand feels in his. How deceptive that is. How good it feels to accept comfort he doesn't deserve. Or maybe give it.]
[It had always been easy to hate Tony Stark when Pietro had stood there. Their pain had run through them, back and forth, a closed circuit. Her anger runs out of her now, homeless and bleeding away, never enough to fill her, no matter how much bubbles out of her heart and her memories.
It's one thing to know how many long hours he's put into his machines, but as he does the unthinkable and accepts, silently, her gesture, it's another to feel it. The roughness of his palm, the pattern of callouses from tools, little imperfections that could be natural or could be the remnants of scrapes or burns.
The work is branded into him. It's...startling, to find how deep it runs. It makes her fingers close on his hand, her thumb trace once over the back of his before it stills again.]
[He's not worthy of the acceptance he feels in the small, simple gesture of her hand squeezing his, the smoothing of her thumb over the back of his hand. It's too comforting.
He's made up entirely of scars like armor. When he'd said it all those years ago, he hadn't meant it metaphorically, but it rang true all the same. He was his work. He is Iron Man. Armor with a very squishy, breakable, broken core.
A quiet, breathy laugh escapes him before he can even consider holding it back, and he catches sight of his reflection before he slides his gaze to look at hers. He's smiling. It almost hurts to.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
no subject
[It's not quite an admonishment, more a calm surprise that she's finally unearthed him. The compound is a vast, open place, but there are still so many places to slip off to. Steve has been slipping off to them more often than he used to, but Wanda had already found everywhere to hide within a month of arriving.
There's a storm outside, one of upstate New York's spring thunderstorms, and she knows if she went outside, the ground and the air would smell freshly scrubbed and clean, but behind the windows, there's only the rain pouring down the glass.
The latest search for his friend has come up empty, all the leads dead ends. Maybe she should leave him. But she would not be a very good friend if she did.
Instead, she crosses over, slipping her shawl off her shoulders and setting it gently around his, before looping her little finger through his, and standing to watch the rain. They don't need to talk if he has no words. She knows.]
no subject
no subject
It's at least one week too long. She explains, and the king is, if not understanding, at least accommodating. It's not so difficult to make her way back to New York, and Romanoff has taught her about blending in. She takes time to pause and stare up at the building, the smooth facade stretching up to the sky. This was where the Avengers had first fought together, standing between the world and the forces trying to destroy it. She and Pietro had watched, like everyone else. She had seen what he'd done. It hadn't mattered at the time.
She knows the way into the building, a back entrance that means she doesn't need to move past the security detail at the public entrance. She only needs to speak to FRIDAY.
It's been years. He might not remember. He might not respond.]
He owes me four more minutes.
no subject
And then he realizes what she means and he really does panic.
It's his own damn fault, setting the codes, the safeties, so many safeties, so many exploited loopholes, so many places to disappear, to never be seen at all, all put in place specifically to protect his frie-- allies? Friends. If he only ever admits it to himself that's not pathetic, right? They're his friends. Or were.
Anyway.
He considers stalling. He knows how well that will go over.
The elevator opens with a ding and Tony emerges, hands in his jacket pockets, gaze outward and searching. For the briefest moment he stops, remembers, hears the echo of his nightmares given voice. He lets it all out in a huff, trying for a laugh. It falls so very short.]
Welcome, miss Maximoff.
no subject
Stark.
[She doesn't come any closer, waving an absent hand at the ceiling, then remembers herself. From anyone else, that's an idle gesture, but she can bring down buildings with a motion like that.
She laces her fingers together, twisting them, locking them into place. Not a threat. She's not here to be a threat. She wants to look away, or turn and leave and forget about this, but—no. No, she was an Avenger, and so was he, and that still means something.]
Do you have your FRIDAY timing me?
no subject
His quiet laugh is a little more genuine when she questions him.]
No.
[He hadn't even thought to.]
Feel free to ask her, she obviously won't deny you.
no subject
[She has one question to ask, and one confession to make. It might take a little longer than four minutes. Especially since her mouth has gone dry now, and his attention is...difficult. He's afraid. They're all afraid of her. They think she can't tell.
Her eyes drop and sweep away, crawling back up the wall without seeing it.]
Vision was cooking. For me. I was going to help him make paprikash. I wanted to go to the store, and he would not let me leave. He said it was because of you, what you had told him.
[Now she looks over again, and she does look angry, but it's a banked, injured anger.] Why did you tell him to keep me there? Why did you not tell me to stay?
no subject
It's almost like he deflates.
He pulls his hands from his pockets and crosses his arms for a moment, squeezes, uncrosses. He wishes he'd walked just a little farther into the room so he'd have something to lean against, but no. He'd left himself wide open. In every aspect. He asked for it. And this was not what he'd expected.]
That's what this is about? You came here to ask me--
[He drags a hand over his mouth, as if that's ever effectively shut him up.]
This is going to sound really insensitive, but mostly I did it because I wasn't sure how you'd take it from me. If you would at all. You trusted him, he likes you, it made sense at the time. I didn't think-- [he cuts himself off with a sharp, short bark of laughter] --didn't know. I didn't know it'd get so bad.
[And he's rubbing a hand over his face again, his eyes, scrubbing, and then suddenly his attention is fully, 100%, unflinchingly on Wanda.]
I just wanted to keep you safe and I didn't think you'd believe me, but I hoped you'd believe him.
And I failed you again.
no subject
[It comes out before she can stop it, and now she unlaces her fingers only to wrap her hands around her arms, as if Stark's computer cannot keep the inside of the building at the perfect temperature at every moment.
What does she feel for Vision? She hasn't found a way to put it into words yet, but in the time it's taken her to try and figure it out, they've grown comfortable. There is a closeness there that she hadn't expected. Or there had been, before she had turned on him. But maybe he forgives more easily than most, even if she isn't certain he knows how to forget.]
no subject
For a moment he wants to reach out, because he recognizes that panic. Recognizes knowing you've let someone so much closer than you meant to and how absolutely lethal it is to realize you've misplaced your trust and affection. How debilitating it is to be reminded you're human. How some people seem so much more than.
His expression is infinitely more kind than he knows she'll appreciate, but it hurts. He hurts. It's a selfish pain, he's claiming pain that doesn't belong to him, but when has that ever stopped him? People in his proximity get hurt. Whether he personally deals it or not is irrelevant, it might as well be his fault. Probably is. Usually is.
He has no idea what to say.]
You are trusted. [His lips quirk up at the corner and he blazes through, quiet and low in contrast to her outburst. Like all the fight he might have had left is just gone.
There's another huff of laughter, void of any humor.]
Just wanted to keep you from being locked up for your own good.
[And he rolls his eyes up and can't seem to pick anywhere to level his gaze, settles for out the windows, into the open nothingness of the sky.]
You're not exactly in the best company to pretend to be normal.
no subject
[Now she moves, slow and stiff as if all her joints ache, each swing of her booted feet taking her closer to the window until she can put a hand on it and stare out, the other still wrapped around her stomach to hold herself in. She can put her back to him. It doesn't hurt to do that, it doesn't make her skin crawl to be exposed like that.
What she wants to say next...there are a few things. She could be angry, tell him that locking her up for her own good had been what he'd done when he'd appointed Vision as her glorified babysitter, or that it hadn't mattered what he'd wanted, that he hadn't known it would go bad the way it had. None of that will help now, and saying it might not matter.]
What happened in Lagos. What I did. Trying to help, doing what I thought needed to be done and watching it go...so wrong... [She tucks her hair behind her ear, not looking at him, not even at the faint reflection in the window, and her voice is even lower now.]
I didn't understand before. How much it. Sits. Inside you. Like a stone.
no subject
Because Wanda continued to rip his balance from him, again and again, his tenuous, hard-won balance. His reality had never been so flexible til she'd gone and tap danced through his deepest fears.
And now... that... that sounded like an apology. Understanding. Common ground.
He'd never wished it on her.
His gaze remains on nothing but sky, though he claws at something tickling his cheek.]
It never really gets easier. It shouldn't.
no subject
It's a stupid impulse. It's weak. He's going to reject it, push it away like he pushes away every gesture, even from his friends. And she is not a friend, is she. Not trusted, whatever he says. He's afraid.
She still lets her hand drop back, swing back toward him, held low with fingers spread wide, not a trace of red dancing between them, her other arm motionless, tight across her stomach where the stone lives now. He won't take it. But maybe it will be enough to have offered it.]
no subject
To give when he's already taken too much from her.
He's not afraid of her, not really. He used to be. Before he finally accepted he was really just afraid of himself. Always had been. Always will be. Just couldn't stand knowing someone else knew it now, too.
So he reaches out, takes the steps, closes the distance, and laces his fingers through hers as he joins her at the window. Still staring out at nothing. Feeling everything.
He wants to laugh. Or cry. Or crack his forehead against the glass. So he just stands still, hyper-aware of how small her hand feels in his. How deceptive that is. How good it feels to accept comfort he doesn't deserve. Or maybe give it.]
no subject
It's one thing to know how many long hours he's put into his machines, but as he does the unthinkable and accepts, silently, her gesture, it's another to feel it. The roughness of his palm, the pattern of callouses from tools, little imperfections that could be natural or could be the remnants of scrapes or burns.
The work is branded into him. It's...startling, to find how deep it runs. It makes her fingers close on his hand, her thumb trace once over the back of his before it stills again.]
I think I am over my time now. We are even.
no subject
He's made up entirely of scars like armor. When he'd said it all those years ago, he hadn't meant it metaphorically, but it rang true all the same. He was his work. He is Iron Man. Armor with a very squishy, breakable, broken core.
A quiet, breathy laugh escapes him before he can even consider holding it back, and he catches sight of his reflection before he slides his gaze to look at hers. He's smiling. It almost hurts to.]
I'll put it on your tab.
[Yeah. They're even.]