✷ ✷ ✷ ɐılnɾ ✷ ✷ ✷ (hurlyburly) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2018-09-22 20:10:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !log/thread, julia wicker, tony stark / iron man (mcu) |
Who: Tony Stark (MCU) & Julia Wicker
What: Julia and Tony get out of town for a day or two.
When: Sunday, the 16th, after the ball
Where: Portlandia
Warnings: So much guilt
Status: Complete in gdocs
It was afternoon, and Tony still had not slept. After Kurama managed to free the real Julia from the fairies’ clutches, he had found Tony, with Julia in tow. They’d left then, and Tony felt a little guilty about leaving before all of their people had been rescued. But he wanted to get Julia out of that place and make sure that Peter had, in fact, been sent home when his mask was removed. Fortunately, the fairies’ magic worked in his favor for once, and when Julia and Tony removed their masks, hand in hand, they had both been teleported to Tony’s living room. Peter had been waiting for them, seated on the couch like a parent anxiously waiting for their teenager to come home after an act of rebellion. When they appeared, he stood up straight, and launched into a million upset words a minute that were stopped when he noticed how tired the two of them looked. He left it at that for the night, and let them walk off to get some sleep unharassed. Julia was quiet, her fingers stung from the strings of the enchanted harp but the cuts were not severe thanks to Kurama’s abilities. She didn’t want to say anything at all. Julia just wanted to be held. Tony was exhausted, and yet sleep would not come as he lay in bed with his arms wrapped tightly around Julia. Instead, his mind played cruel tricks with his memories, mixing past and present in a kind of sleepless dream. Peter disappeared into a swarm of birds. Julia dissolved into a puddle of blood that dripped through his fingers. Half of the guests of the ball vanished in a cloud of dust. Tony walked among the broken and bloodied bodies of the Avengers, the last one standing. Julia’s disappearance and the situation with the fairies had evidently struck a little too close to home in the wake of his memory update and the effects of Thanos wielding all the Infinity Stones. Julia had gone home in the morning, and Tony spent time perusing the Network, trying to get a handle on the scope of this thing and its aftermath, to see if there was anyone that they’d lost. He was not in the mood to try reasoning with Peter yet and explain why his presence at the ball had struck such a nerve. He was still very much on edge, despite the favorable outcome this time around. If he’d had a clearer head, he might not have felt the need to go on the defensive against Steve in that Network post. The resulting conversation had only served to exacerbate his anxiety, and his brain started twisting his thoughts, reminding him of how little control he had. You are your failures, not your successes. There’s no such thing as redemption. You are who you’ve always been. No matter what you do, it’s never enough. He wanted to pour himself a drink, to lock himself away in his workshop and build or think away his problems like he had always done before. Instead, he sent Rhodey a text, hopped into his car, and drove over to Julia’s. As he waited for her to answer the door, Tony tried not to think about the scene that had taken place inside two nights before. Perhaps sensing that, or not feeling like her wards had provided much protection at all, Julia closed the door behind her and stepped out front to meet Tony outside. She was worried about all the people cursed. People who had put themselves in danger to rescue those like her who hadn’t been able to protect themselves. Her guilt overwhelmed her, especially when the spell she suggested to stop those with the decaying curse was an obvious failure. She was damn lucky she had thought to test it first with a sample. She had not said what became of the sample. Despite the fact that they had tried to sleep the night before, she didn’t look like she’d gotten any. “You okay?” she said. Julia wasn’t expecting a yes, it was more or less just a confirmation that she cared if he was okay. Her hands reached out for him, grateful to be able to at least touch him. Not everyone was so lucky. “That’s my line,” Tony replied. He had come to check on her, but there was a forced joviality to his voice. He had also come to tell her he needed to get out of here for a few days to clear his head. He felt like he was on the verge of retreating inward, and he was trying hard to break away from his old habits. Julia leaned up to kiss him briefly. “I’m shameless,” she said. She wasn’t as good about forcing the proper tone needed to convey the joke. At least not like him. “You want to get something to eat?” she offered. Mostly it was an offer to walk away from the scene of the crime, where they didn’t have to talk if they wanted to, all while practicing a tiny amount of selfcare. She was devious like that. Tony nodded at her suggestion. “Am I driving or are you?” he asked, which by now Julia would recognize as him asking yay or nay on portal travel. His phone pinged, and he checked his watch to see an incoming text from Rhodey. He had been given the green light to go, if that’s what he wanted. He shot off a quick response. “I could use a break from Tumbleweed. Boston? Maybe Portland? Somewhere we can just wander around and see what looks interesting to eat?” She waited until his phone was put away before her hands slid up to his shoulders, one reaching up higher to comb through his hair a little with her fingers. The motion ignited a memory of the night before and she froze just slightly before resting it back on his shoulder, forcing herself to meet his eyes and finding comfort there, though her smile was more tentative than sure. “You read my mind,” Tony answered truthfully, sliding his arm around her waist. He closed his eyes for a moment as she ran her fingers through his hair, opening his eyes again when he felt her freeze. “Except,” he began, returning Julia’s gaze and coming to the realization that she could use some time away from Tumbleweed too. “What do you say we make it a long lunch? At least a day or two?” “That’s a very long lunch,” she said wryly. But it didn’t take her long to decide. “Let’s do it. Do you need to go to your place and pack? I just need to grab a bag with a few things.” Tony had not been planning to leave straight from Julia’s place—he had actually not made plans of any kind yet—so he was not exactly travel-ready. And there were still the loose ends he’d left with Peter. He nodded, “Probably should, yeah.” He let his hand fall from her waist and took a step back. “I can wait here for you to pack, then we can swing by my place?” Julia nodded. It felt irresponsible to leave. There was a very real lead weight that sat in her stomach. Why should they get off scot free and go on a two day holiday, when everyone else ended up getting fucked over for the experience? But really, what did she think she could really do? Magically speaking? Not much. She wasn’t part of the bureau. His technology didn’t yet have the capability to reverse magical energy signatures. ...Although, there was a thought. Julia decided to pack one of her notebooks. She leaned in and kissed the side of his face quickly. “I’ll be quick,” she promised and she hurried in. It took her a little longer to pack than she thought it would. But she didn’t keep him waiting too long by the time she’d come back out with an overnight bag, and another tote that was full of a few new ideas. Tony was no longer waiting on her stoop when Julia emerged. Instead, he was leaning on the hood of his car looking at his phone, an action in and of itself which spoke volumes for where his head was at—he was overly protective of his paint job. He looked up at Julia as she came towards him, the look on his face a clear indication of how very done with this place he was. “Surprise twist: apparently Rhodey’s a bird.” For about two seconds she had a great idea. Like a lot of things in Julia’s life, when there was a problem she liked to think of a magical solution. No matter how many times it made the problem worse, or created a new problem that wasn’t there before. Magic, discovering it, was her constant. This was better than that. Another project for the two of them to work on, really work on, together that in no way would go as bad as the battery experiment did. And then her face fell. “Of course he is.” Her idea would have to be put on hold. “He okay? Raincheck? Take him with?” Tony stood up straight and shoved his phone into his pocket. “He says I should go. Claims this isn’t even the weirdest shit he’s ever had to deal with.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. When he opened them again, there was a sort of pleading look coming from his eyes. “I’ve got to get out of here, Julia.” He cleared his throat and moved forward to take her bags. “Let’s do lunch. We’ll play the rest by ear.” And he walked around to place her bags in the trunk. “Okay.” She didn’t judge, keeping her expression neutral on what she would have preferred to do. He wanted to get out of town and clear his head, that was something she could do. Her hands hurt and she tried not to dwell on the hurt she’d created for others by getting caught up in a fucked up situation. “Your place still? Then we can head out?” “My place,” Tony confirmed as he motioned for her to get in the car. “I need to give Peter a head’s up. Check on the bird man.” He sounded much more casual than he felt. Back at the mansion, his conversation with Peter was brief, with promises of chat upon his return on Tony’s end, and that he would call Tony immediately if he needed anything on Peter’s. Rhodey was, as promised, a bird. A bald eagle, at that. A fact that would have been hilarious to Tony if he wasn’t so tired, both in need of sleep and just straight up sick of this kind of shit at the moment. Tony passed along his plans of playing it by ear, after assurances from Rhodey that he would keep Tony in the loop so he could come right back if Rhodey needed him. A quick pack of an overnight bag, and Tony was ready to go. “Ready?” he asked Julia as he emerged from the closet with the bag over his shoulder. He dropped it on the bed beside Julia’s, there if they needed them. “Ready,” Julia said. Without fanfare, she’d already calculated a portal, opening up to Portland, Oregon’s downtown Pearl District. She figured if nothing else they could find a place to eat, walk along the riverside, maybe even Forest Park, and if they stayed for longer, great. She instantly felt the cool humidity on the other side of the portal. The ground was damp with a rainshower they’d just missed. It was just about the most literal change in scenery from Tumbleweed as there could be, and Tony was instantly grateful for it. He could not remember the last time he was in Portland, but a memory of Phil Coulson popped into his head. He smiled bittersweetly, then remembered that the son of a bitch was actually still alive apparently. Or at least, alive again. He looked over at Julia, wondering at the choice of destination. “Favorite haunt of yours?” Julia shrugged. “Actually, I haven’t been yet. I just think Portlandia’s hilarious.” She winced slightly. Maybe Tony was too busy to check out some of their most famous sketches like Put a bird on it! which seemed to be the portal’s response to anything weird that happened. Julia set her bags down and stepped through the portal. After standing on the other side for about three seconds she stepped right back, and went through her bag for a jacket. The 60s/70s damp weather was freezing in comparison to being in Texas during the summer months. Once she had a jacket, and they were on the other side of the portal, she closed it. “Wander around until we see something that looks good?” she offered. “I’ll take your word for it,” Tony replied, as Julia went back for her jacket. When she returned, he reached out to take her hand in his, gently inspecting it first, his lips pressed tightly together. He nodded, and the two of them set out down the street. He wanted to ask her about her fingers, how she was coping after last night, how her friends were doing. But instead, he said, simply, “Thanks for this.” “Yeah, of course.” Julia wanted to launch into her idea, the next project she could bury herself in. She didn’t want to think about the shit her friends had to go through to dig her and everyone else out of trouble. She didn’t want to think about how useless her wards had been -- though she was pretty sure Marina might when she got back. “I honestly don’t remember a lot about last night,” she said, finally. It seemed like the way he inspected her hands needed to be addressed. “I remember playing the harp. And…” It hurt to play, and she was unable to stop herself. “...I was basically in a trance. Some guy tried to crash the stage and I think someone asked me to change the song and that’s the only real details of the night I can recall.” “Then you don’t remember how utterly useless I was. Couldn’t track you. Couldn’t find a trace of them. Stuck playing by their rules on their turf. Couldn’t even be the one to get you out of there.” Tony was being maybe a little too honest with the self-deprecation, but once he started, it snowballed out of him. “Fairies,” he concluded with a slight tilt of his head. “Not my favorite.” Julia squeezed his hand. Her skin was still a little tight and sharp along each shallow cut. “You went after me. On their turf, stuck playing their rules. You did it even when you didn’t have your tech to back you up. How do you not see that as incredible?” Julia tilted her head to look at him, before smiling and saying: “A+ boyfriending. Considering this was a magic thing and your magical girlfriend was taken from her own warded house, I’m calling it. I win this round of the blame game.” She tried to keep smiling but it faltered. “And people got hurt and I feel like shit about it. So… let’s just stick to lunch.” Tony thought Julia was displaying a clear bias towards him and his actions, which were no different from most of the other people at that ball, but he said nothing. When she brought up blame, he couldn’t help himself, despite her stated desire to avoid the subject from there on out. “You might feel to blame, but you’re not responsible. There’s a difference.” One that he knew well. It was a concept he wrestled with, and often. He was a frequent contestant on the Blame Game. “We both did what we could,” she conceded. But the tone suggested she wanted to move on. Emotionally, Tony’s words didn’t quite stick. The triumph of getting everyone back from the fairies didn’t feel like a win. It felt like they’d been played or used for entertainment. Maybe if she was able to undo what was done to those who were cursed afterwards… “What kind of food are you in the mood for? They actually have vegan places here.” It seemed about the least Texas concept for a restaurant as one could possibly get. Even though it wasn’t wasn’t enough, Julia might as well have added. Tony knew it rang true for the both of them. Many things did. For better or worse, the two were a lot alike. Tony ran his thumb along the knuckle of her hand in his to show he understood. His gaze was directed out at the buildings and people strolling along the rain drenched streets. “I like the way your mind works, Shrubwitch,” Tony agreed to her food suggestion. “I’m assuming we just need to find the nearest place with the animal-elemental word motif? Like Iron Eagle. Pig & Anchor?” “Does hairy count as an element?” Julia said, looking questionably at one of the signs. She dipped in close to him as they walked. Even if she couldn’t bring herself to talk about her anxieties and shortcomings, she still wanted him close. The sun closed for business once more as gray clouds sealed up any blue that might have been peeking through before. Rain started to fall. Without being asked, Julia made a gesture with her free hand, and the rain appeared to miss them wherever they stepped. Tony welcomed Julia’s proximity and found that he was grateful to have her beside him instead of going off alone as his initial impulse had been. When she performed the trick with the rain, his lips turned up into a half-smile. “Show off.” They walked in silence for a bit, and while the sound of the rain and cars driving through wet streets was comforting in its own way, Tony was not a man for silences. His own thoughts were loud without conversation, music, or other distractions to drown them out. His mind kept going back to his conversation with Steve, and his former teammate’s assessment of his motivations, missing the mark as usual when it came to understanding Tony and his actions. His brow furrowed some, an expression that would have been easier to pass off as a reaction to the rain hitting his face, except Julia had seen to it that they’d remain dry. “You’ve got something,” Julia said, looking at him, her eyes just missing his as she zeroed in on something. “It’s right…” Her index touched his forehead. “There. There is definitely something in there.” Her other hand gave his a squeeze. Tony’s brow furrowed even more as he tried to follow her finger with his eyes. “You got a spell for that too?” “Nope,” she said. Seeing a restaurant that looked interesting, Julia pulled Tony over with her to look at the menu. Unusually for her, she stood right in front of the Avenger, positioning him at her back and pulling his arms around her. He’d be able to see the menu over her shoulder easily. That wasn’t the strange part. Julia never liked people behind her. But this was different. This felt normal. She didn’t even realize she was doing it. They may have gotten played, but to Julia it was just one more reason to trust Tony Stark. He went after her regardless of the odds. “Anything look good?” she asked him. Tony gave the menu a cursory glance. Although he had a refined palate, he was not choosy about his food, unless he was purposefully making a scene. As it was, he was suddenly not particularly interested in lunch, but instead was focused on the way Julia had positioned herself in front of him. Her quirk about people coming up behind her had not gone unnoticed by him, but he never questioned it. Just like she had never mentioned the tremor in his hand at certain triggers. They simply accepted these things about one another without questioning them. He tried not to question this now, and turned his attention back to the menu. “Let’s do it. Tony released her from his arms and stepped to the side to open the door for her. Lunch had been a little pretentious, but it was a welcome change. Julia stepped through the open door and they were seated quickly, having beat the lunch crowd due to the time zone difference. Her nails were always painted and manicured. Today they were a pale teal, that made the silver rings and tattoos on her fingers stand out just a little more. There were a lot of vegan, vegetarian and gluten free options on the menu. The words organic, non-GMO and locally sourced were peppered liberally in the item descriptions. But once they were seated Julia found she wasn’t that hungry. She ordered a vegetarian appetizer of fried stuffed squash blossoms, just because. Eating them almost felt like a dare. When the waitress left after their drink order, Julia said, “I didn’t mean to shut you out earlier.” Tony leaned back in his chair, as if by adopting a relaxed posture, the rest of him would follow suit. He replied with a casual wave of his hand, “I get it. The whole point of this outing was to switch off.” He brought his hand down onto the table and began lightly drumming his fingers on it. “I just ask that you kindly remove my portion from that guilt I know you're internalizing.” “I make exactly zero promises,” Julia said. As if to head off any argument, she shrugged. “I care about you. That part doesn’t switch off.” The drumming stopped and Tony cocked his head to the side and back in a kind of acknowledgement of Julia's words. “What was in the other bag?” he asked, changing the subject. “Felt like books.” Tony may have had the self awareness to stop himself from hiding away in his lab, but Julia didn’t. Have a problem? Find the right magical combo to fix it. Create a new problem? See the previous step. “So I had an idea. You know how to detect magical signatures from my world. There are people that were cursed by the fairies and we could see if we could find magical signatures from there, not to mention magical users from other worlds. We can’t remove the power dampening tech from the portal room, but what if we don’t need to replicate that technology? What if instead of being able to pick up magical signatures, we figured out how to disrupt them? Disrupt curses, the ability to cast, what if that was something the two of us could figure out?” But the change in Julia’s demeanor was instant. She liked burying herself in work and research, it was an aspect of her life she had a very small amount of control over. Tony's self-awareness was hard won. And he didn't always heed that little voice in his head, the one that sounded an awful lot like Rhodey, and told him to pull back like he had that afternoon. It would have been so easy to bury himself in work, cut himself off from the world, let his thoughts and the contents of his liquor cabinet consume him. But the last thing he needed was to push away the people he cared about, or go full on mad scientist and give his naysayers more fodder for criticisms. Even if a part of him did think the bureau would benefit from some security droids to ease the pressure on their dwindling pool of portal guards. “Disrupt the magical energy fields,” Tony summed up, to make sure he understood what she was proposing. The drumming on the table resumed as he thought about it for a moment. “You think you could round up some magical types willing to submit to some scans?” “I do,” Julia said. The squash blossom appetizer really wasn’t as strange as it sounded on the menu. Anything stuffed with cheese, fried and battered was going to be delicious. It was basically cheating. The waitress took their lunch orders and left. “Do any of your defensive spells accomplish that sort of thing?” Tony asked, looking for a starting point. He took a bite of the appetizer, but didn’t even bother savoring the taste. Julia’s idea had piqued his interest, drawing away his focus from pretty much everything else. “Leave it to you,” he pointed at her with the other half of his squash blossom, “to turn this into a work trip.” “It’s possible, but that’s not knowledge that was ever shared with me. Knowledge is literally power. The best get found by magical universities that have access to more information and connections to research. The rest of us, if we’re lucky, find safe houses with hedgewitches that scrape up whatever spells and connections we can find.” Julia shrugged. “But any of that would also be from a more limited perspective on magic. It wouldn’t be finding a more universal, multi-dimensional solution to disrupting spells and magical energy, and classically trained magicians don’t usually look too deeply into scientific technology, either. I met a hedge who was an MIT grad student once. What she was working on was pretty radical.” “MIT grad here, so that doesn't surprise me.” Tony recalled how natural Julia's magic had felt to him, even if he had acquired her knowledge along with her skill. It was highly mathematic in its way, and there was a logic to it that Tony could follow. “Okay, so we start from scratch,” he shrugged, eyeing her across the table. “This something you want to tackle right away, or can we get lost in Portland for a little while?” Julia tried not to smile. “That bad, huh? I think that’s saying something coming from you.” This wasn’t the kind of project she saw them knocking out in a week. Though she was eager to start, she could almost appreciate taking a break. “There’s a pretty huge park not far from here, I think. Inside the city. Like Central Park but more forest if you want to check it out,” she offered. Tony let a slow, lopsided grin form on his face.“Believe me, I get the urge. Some of my best ideas come when I'm burying myself in work out of avoidance.” Tony picked up his fork at began poking at one of the squash blossoms. It seemed like he had finished talking, but then he started up again, without really meaning to. “Of course, some of those ended up backfiring on me. Through no fault of their own, the ideas were sound. Still are. Execution is where I run into problems.” He dropped the fork onto his plate, a bit of squash still impaled on the end. “Central Park, but more forest,” Tony repeated, trying hard to sound upbeat after letting his mouth run away with his thoughts. “I don't think it gets more Portland than that.” Julia gently nudged Tony’s foot with her own under the cover of the table. “You keep singing my song, you’re gunna have to start paying me royalties.” Tony shook his head, but smiled slightly. “You know, I still can't decide if the multiverse bringing the two of us together was a total fluke or by design. We're bound to either save the universe or destroy it.” Julia shrugged and did not exactly disagree. |