"- Yeah," Tony breathed out, a pent-up rush of breath. He was leaning back on the vanity, his hands planted at his sides; he raised one of them to rub the back of his thumb at the bridge of his nose, lips drawn together. "Well. I asked."
And she'd shared, and ... it all made perfect sense, actually. Most things did, when she laid them out. But this resonated with him beyond a simple appreciation for her logic, the way she thought about things - no, there was something about this that he knew. It subdued him, because he recognized it. "You owe him," he repeated back to her, inspecting the tips of his shoes. "I get it. I was - well. Jarvis was twelve, I think, or thirteen. When I got him." Like he was a puppy, or something. He chased away the unfortunate phrasing with a twitch of the corner of his mouth. "His dad worked with the Gamemakers. After my mom and dad were killed, his family got spooked, and they ran, and, you know. They got caught. They offed his parents, but they brought him home - ripped his tongue out, trained him up, and - boom." He smiled, tight, uncomfortable, reaching out in front of him to pantomime something like dropping a rock into a pond. "Left him on my doorstep." He had no idea how much of that story she knew, or didn't. Part of him loved that - that he wasn't the single solitary gate through which Jarvis passed to touch other people, not anymore - and part of him really, really didn't. "There's people you ... owe things. I know."
And here he'd wound up talking about himself, the way he always did. It was frustrating, because he knew it was wrong, that it wasn't quite the thing - but he was never quite sure how else to make that connection. He pressed on, a little rushed, pushing himself up to take a seat on the edge of the vanity, toes trailing on the floor. "But you, you want to ... I mean, let's say we get out of here. We're all in Thirteen. And there's no reason for you not to do exactly what you want. You can do anything with that, and you're going to ... pay old debts. I mean, I get it. But - look." He wanted so badly not to be disingenuous - between them, he wasn't sure there was anything you could do that was much worse than insulting one another's intelligence, and going anything short of full disclosure was doing just that. "I want you to get every single thing that's coming to you, you know that. I'm going to get you out, and I want you to do whatever the hell you want with it. But I want ..." He struggled with how to say it; came up with his usual distant, echoing, insufficient turn of phrase. "I want you, too." And so he couldn't be trusted. In his world, as in hers, people molded themselves and tailored their words to try to get things out of you, and he could see that that was in some ways what he was doing. He had an agenda. He owed it to her to flag it. Not much in the way of selflessness, but - there it was. He was not a good man. "So you don't have to listen to me. It's not like I know shit about being happy. Or marriage, fuck. But you spend your whole life doing things for other people, and when you finally get it back in your hands ..."
And who knew what would happen, right? Maybe the point was moot. Maybe one, or two, or all of them would die. Maybe it wouldn't matter; and in any event, it wasn't like she'd asked for his advice. For his anything. Still - it was coming down to the wire, whatever it was. And maybe it was time to start saying things, instead of just signaling them. He laughed, low and airy and self-deprecating, and when he turned his smile up to her it was broad but apologetic, a kind of helpless, unhappy grin. Them's the breaks. "I'd miss you, doll. That's it." It meant he had no credibility; it meant what he said wasn't worth nothing. He wasn't sure how both could be true at once, but there were plenty of things he didn't understand. "Like crazy."