iron man's number is (atomic26) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-08-15 15:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *narrative, tony stark |
[Narrative: Tony S.]
Who: Tony Stark
What: Cliffhangerrrrrrr
Where: His lab under the bay.
When: A few days ago.
Warnings/Rating: Safe. For you.
Rubbing his eyes, Tony pushed his chair back from his worktable and dropped his head back on the top of his chair. It was on wheels, and scientist and chair rolled a few inches back on the clean blue tile, unhindered, as he took the first breath he noticed taking in hours. Tony stared upward. The silt of the river water made for low visibility, and the view through the transparent ceiling above was not through crystal water but instead a floating muddy mass of shifting clouds.
Tony had sunk this lab deep into the river, and there was at least ninety feet of water over his head at any given time. It had amused him to put in for a permit to build more channels down here, infrastructure out of the goodness of his heart for a more efficient ferry system that never materialized. When he got down there, he found some of the remnants of the famed Coney Island Dreamland, pilings from the old piers and tall metal lamp-posts warped from the fire that had destroyed the amusement park at the turn of the century. A massive winged woman, the statue missing an arm a la Venus de Milo, was actually looking down at him right now, her upper body extending from the bottom of the river and reaching a few feet above the transparent saucer that housed the upper floor of the lab, but you couldn’t see her through the silt—a minor detail he hadn’t thought about until the lab was already complete.
Tired eyes squinting, Tony thought maybe he could see the profile of her face and wing in the shifting shadows cast by the glowing blue of the cable lighting, but it might have been his imagination. While he searched, he flexed his fingers and wrist, working the scarred flesh that stretched taut from his elbows to his wrists. Most of the ugly scabbing had now faded, leaving shiny scars to match the ones on his back. Tony was dismayed about the scarring, vain as he was and as focused on the perception he gave others, but it wasn’t anything a good suit and romantic lighting couldn’t hide. No, right now he was more concerned about the growing lack of flexibility in his hands and wrists. He was trying to work, the way he always did, pouring effort and intent into new creations, more efficient suits and a growing number of prosthetic limbs. The lab resembled a modern Frankenstein’s, rotating blue models of ligaments hanging eerily in the conditioned air, various metal models sitting on tables and demonstrating exaggerated movements. Anatomic diagrams worthy of Michelangelo boasted generators and circuit boards, and there were several tables blackened with certain unfortunate chemical experiments. Tony looked around and saw pieces of ideas in progress, and not much else.
His last playlist had long since come to an end without him being aware of the fact, and so the lab was filled with the quiet of his own breathing, the creak of the chair, and the sound of his own steps as he finally pushed himself up. With an old man’s groan, he rubbed at his lower back, wishing Loki and his frost burn to hell, and moved stiffly out of the upper level of the lab and down one. Tony hadn’t had much of a chance to outfit this lab, its presence more of a backup to his more prominent, visible models in the Tower and on the Californian coast, but the living quarters that stretched out on this level were comfortable, and as clean as one might expect they would be with Tony Stark living there and no housekeeping to visit every day. Modern lamps with silver necks held globes of natural light, and the bed was large and white. The kitchen had a liberal coating of toast crumbs, Tony’s food staple of choice when there were no Chinese or pizza places able to deliver (the major problem with having a lab underwater).
He made himself a peanut butter bagel, nearly dropping the knife twice, and then sat with one hip on the counter, munching. He was too tired to think about anything but his irritation with his failing body, and as he made annoyed sounds at himself through 20/20 hindsight, his eye fell on a little cooler in the corner. It was a dorm room cooler, a nothing little device purchased at an electronics score, the kind used to store lunches under desks and beer in poker rooms. This one didn’t hold beer, though. It was full of green, mint-flavored cure-alls, ordered straight and subsequently delivered via Passages Hotel.
Tony was pretty confident in the specifics of his order, having thought about it for a long time and also careful to think through the ways it might go wrong. There was some vague idea that the Hotel might have thought of something that he didn’t, of course, but Tony thought that unlikely. (Not so unlikely that he would give it to someone else, but still unlikely.)
Tony’s chewing slowed as he pondered the little fridge, and he dusted off his mustache and his hands before searching in the kitchen’s full-size monster for milk. The milk was, of course, sour, so he left that where it was and settled on coffee. He pushed the button on the machine, fumbling a little with the carafe, and then looked back over his shoulder at the fridge. He wondered if the panacea would fix some of the problems with the damaged muscles and ligaments, or if it was only for illnesses. The vague curiosity was enough, and layered with the frustration of the past few months and a definite desire to escape the present, Tony left the burbling coffee machine behind and crossed the room.
He went with the kind that could be swallowed, because needles kinda gave him the heebies ever since an unfortunate college incident. Tony felt no compelling desire to discuss his choices with anyone; there were few people left for that, and most of those discussed things with him, not the other way around. He took his beverage with him to the couch, the simulated sunlight-through-water making blue signatures on the white leather. Swirling it within its glass vial, he wondered if it tasted just like he ordered.
And, it turned out, it did.
In the kitchen, the coffee maker eventually burbled to a stop. The carafe went cold, grew a few spots of green, and then, unattended, congealed.