InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "jenna, the hunchback!"

. (mareas) wrote in rooms,
@ 2015-09-11 02:19:00

Entry tags:

!marvel comics, *log, bucky barnes, clementine murphy, penny ross, pepper potts, tony stark

[Triage for the billionaire]
Who: Clem, Penny, Pepper, Bucky (+ not!dead Tony Stark)
What: Checking Tony's non-vital vitals
Where: Graham & Shane's old place
When: Recentish
Warnings/Rating: Don't think so

Clementine, she wasn't sure of any damn thing.

Seemed like the week since most her folk went missing was filled with other folks needing her for things. This way and that, and this time it was some man that looked dead, but that apparently weren't dead at all, which just sounded 'bout as insane as a thing could sound. She wasn't real sure where it ranked alongside zombies and men burning pyres made of womenfolk, but she was real sure it wasn't natural any. Another thing was for damn certain, and that was it being true; James, he wouldn't know what a joke was if it was strapped to his backside. So, Clementine, she reckoned there really was some man with real quiet vitals, nearly dead, and maybe hanging on thready.

She put Penny on standby, but she thought better of it some by the time she got to the Queens duplex that Penny still called home. Best just have the other woman, seeing as being an EMT was real good for emergencies, but this felt like it was going to be a whole lot more than stitching someone and getting them transported in her bus. She wasn't even driving the damn ambulance. She was still in the truck she kept borrowing from work, and she climbed out hungover and tired. She could text Penny right then, before even going into the side of the duplex now sitting empty, but she must've been feeling like a real glutton for punishment, because she let herself on in first.

Lights off, but it was clear Penny was still paying for power and water, since the place was cool as could be. Messy, like folks just up and went for a walk some, and not like they were gone forever. Baby things scattered all over, dishes in the sink, and throws rumpled on the couch. It felt froze, the duplex, which was two bedrooms and open doors. Simple, clear menfolks lived there messy, and only the baby things all scattered seeming wrong for the bachelor pad.

Jeans and a white t-shirt, rumpled from driving long, she crouched, and she rubbed the edge of a baby blanket left lying. Her fingers clutched the soft fabric slow like syrup, and then she forced herself on into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. Place felt like echoes, but the coffee burbled quick, and she sat herself down with the cup and texted Penny, telling her to come on over. Long as no one touched anything, Clementine reckoned she could get through this without weeping or tossing a coffee cup in anyone's face.

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deployed
2015-09-11 09:16 pm UTC (link)

Penny didn't know what was waiting for her once she got Clementine's message, or her subsequent text. She had been to the house a time or two. She hadn't cleaned, she hadn't wanted to move a thing. She hadn't wanted to change anything in case everyone came back home needing to find it exactly as it had been. She had cried there, all on her lonesome, feeling the sting of being lonesome, and without her family. A cousin she had missed something fierce after they'd grown apart by life and circumstances, had been back in her life. A baby she'd looked after time and time again, been up nights with, and loved on like the auntie she'd always wanted to be able to be. She'd had thoughts in her mind of watching Joy grow up and being close like she'd always wanted to be with someone, she'd never had aunts like she'd read about or seen on TV. No older sisters. Nothing like that. She'd tried with Jake when he was small, but she'd gone and failed at that too real well.

He was gone with the rest of them, last thing she heard from him was how he hated her and her heart ached over it.

These were the thoughts she had as she put herself into Field Surgeon mode, and washed herself up a little, even putting a scrub shirt on over a pair of jeans, just because she didn't know what was about to happen. She grabbed her kit, med bag, and stepped out of the front door with a "be good" to Frannie, and walked the few, real long, steps over to the door on the other side of the porch.

She let herself in, didn't look around, couldn't look around, but smelled the coffee, and saw Clementine. She set her stuff down, poured herself a cup, wordlessly, and joined Clementine, sitting down next to her on the couch. Well next to her was putting it lightly, she was sitting tucked in real close and wrapped her arm around her waist and tucked herself in even closer her chin resting on her shoulder. Lonely was the understatement of the century, and maybe it wasn't a greasy diner, but the catastrophe that was about to burst through the door and upset their plans (once again) hadn't reared its ugly head just yet. So she sat there tucked in for just a second.

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propatria
2015-09-13 10:35 pm UTC (link)

They'd made the cross-town journey in a waiting car, and a good thing too. Bucky was trying to keep a low-profile - being spotted carrying Tony Stark's corpse through an alley wouldn't do much good for anonymity, and even a ghost could only be so unobserved with a companion and a body over their shoulder. Stealing a car was the other option, though that, too, would have brought undue attention.

Pulling Pepper's car up to the door gave him the latitude to carry Tony's body up the stairs with an arm around his shoulder like a drunken friend. Only someone paying close attention would have noticed that his feet were dragging on the ground. The door was open, so he went through quickly, his free hand at his side, just in case. He went ahead in first, trusting Pepper to watch behind him - because she was invested in Stark. Not because he trusted anyone implicitly, under any circumstances.

The two women sitting on the couch were a strange sight. The dark house bore all the signs of an entire family, but here were two silent people, sitting without touching anything, waiting for a corpse to arrive. He remembered what Clem had said, about everyone she knew leaving.

He had not thought, yet, about Steve.

This place felt uninhabited. He made his usual unconscious sweep of the surroundings, almost unnoticeable. There was a sucker lying on the floor under the couch, just behind Clem's feet.

He didn't recognize the other woman, but she must be the doctor who was mentioned. He fixed her with a steady gaze. She seemed harmless enough, but obviously that didn't mean anything at all.

While Clem might not know it, she now had a favor in her pocket, one that she could deploy at any time. The same went for her friend the doctor, if she kept quiet. His hair and clothes, bruised but intact body armor, were still wet from the Bay, and the metal arm at his side gleamed, wet and vaguely sinister.

"Table?"

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saltedand
2015-09-14 03:58 am UTC (link)

Pepper didn't think of the man draped over James's arm as a corpse, or she didn't think of him (it) as Tony. It was as simple as that, the two concepts could not elide or mix, oil and water. It was the only way to maintain composure as Tony jolted along like a slit-stringed puppet at James's side, his neck slack. She watched, because she had to. Because she couldn't imagine when time would unpause from the shock of the freezing water flooding through the lab, from seeing him still and dull and light-less.

When she would have to deal with all of it.

So no, Pepper followed. She clung to James's heels like a misshapen shadow, silent and her face narrow and angular and sheet-white behind the drenched red hair. It dripped, slowly down her shoulder-blades, a slick shiny trail on the floor of the building they walked into.

It felt like it had been abandoned, only minutes before. It looked like it was inhabited but the air was too still, and the women who sat curled into one another like kittens on the couch didn't look as if this was theirs. Pepper did not know whether to look for weapons, but she was used to assessing situations quickly, for the danger to a reputation rather than to a life.

"No," she said quietly, but it felt important, sharp in her throat. "Please. If you can, the couch." The table felt like -- like an autopsy. The dissonance of the body would not be contained if it was Tony whose head was tipped back, who was supplicant to a doctor and (Pepper refused to think about knives).

"Can you help?" Her voice was hoarse, it rasped; Pepper twisted her fingers together until the knuckles went waxy-white. She didn't notice. "Please." She was an echo of the women on the couch without realizing, grief worn like skin.

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mareas
2015-09-14 07:04 am UTC (link)

Clementine, she didn't recognize the woman walking in behind James as the woman from that Tower going ablaze, on account of that woman not wearing some bright metal suit. But sitting there, looking up from where Penny had come and sat real close, she recognized the man James was carrying just fine. She'd never read a damn comic book in her life, never seen a hero movie, but she was so damn much a part of this world now, and so was the man hanging there lifeless.

"Whatever took down that Tower, it finally get him?" She asked it standing, to James, and real familiar as she neared.

Southern hospitality said it was time to be making introductions, Penny to James, and Penny to the woman looking like life might be falling on account of this man, but Clementine stared some instead, and Tony Stark was looking real death and heavy as she moved to let James set the man on the couch. She reckoned she maybe she should argue about his neck, too, that the floor or table would be a whole lot better for any spine injury present. Clementine, she didn't bother with saying that any at all. The way James was carrying this man, well, there wasn't a whole lot of hope for that spine.

"You set him on down to the couch, James, and you pull a chair on up for the lady." Because manners, sometimes they stuck in your craw, even in bad times.

Clementine waited for that body to be set down, and she reckoned Penny would come look too. But this, seeing someone near dead, it was her job, and she had a real good track record for fighting folks back; she had an even better track record for telling when they wouldn't be coming back, no matter how much fighting was done over them. And this man on the couch, this man was dead as nails.

Hands quick on her kit, she listened for vitals, took temperature, palpated and looked for bleeding internally at gut and chest. She even pin tested this damn man, and there wasn't a thing. His temperature was a few degrees down, which made her frown. She knew how long since she'd talked to James, and this man's body should be starting to warm back to the surrounding temperature. He was too damn cold to have died on the way over, and there wasn't no lividity, no pooling, no fluids outside the body. Wasn't even a hint of rigor setting in, but the man still didn't have a lick of living in him.

"James, honey, you want to say what happened?" She looked over at Penny, wondering if this made as little damn sense to her. "Penny's good folks. She won't say a thing."

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propatria
2015-09-15 03:36 am UTC (link)

"I don't know," he answered. No one did. That was in part what they'd come to find out more about.

Surprisingly enough, James did as he was told. He laid Tony carefully down on the couch, then pulled up a chair for Pepper to settle in. He wanted to make himself useful, and the suggestion connected with something deep-seated - you pulled out chairs for ladies, even in circumstances like these.

He watched Clem check the body, look for vitals that weren't there. He knew corpses, and Stark? Stark was dead. But he wasn't dead the right way, not dead in the way he should have been. No rigor, no lividity, no smell. It was like he was trapped the second after becoming dead, like Lenin in his glass case.

His gaze slid between the two of them, and he stood close to Pepper. "He disappeared. Stopped answering anyone for days. Took days more to find him. Since he was last seen it's been...six, seven." He didn't like the inexactness of that answer, but it was difficult to know. "He was in a lab under the bay, sitting in a chair."

He reached into one of the many pockets in his body armor and extracted the pill container, an ordinary looking thing, empty. "It was in his hand." He gave it to Clem to inspect, and to hand off to her friend as she saw fit. "Assumed poison, since no sign of trauma." They would fill in the rest, as medical professionals - that the body hadn't changed in hours, possibly days. He'd never seen any poison that could keep a body between death and rot, but if anyone could invent one, Tony Stark seemed like a good candidate.

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deployed
2015-09-15 07:59 pm UTC (link)

Penny didn't know the three people that came through the door, one being carried. But she knew who they were sure enough. Shit. This was nothing but more trouble beating down her door, and when it should have frustrated her, it didn't. Because maybe this wasn't expressly her trouble, but it was new trouble. Interesting trouble. Trouble that didn't hurt, well it hurt, because the two people who were up walking around sure looked hurt, and Penny felt that just by her nature, but it didn't sting like other hurts did.

She watched Clementine carefully, not supervising, but taking note of what she did so she didn't have to redo it all and her brow furrowed deep in concentration while James talked, her eyes moved to Pepper Potts then. That was who that was - she had to assume. Field Surgeon and Detective hats worn simultaneously it seemed. She took the pill container from Clementine, looked it over, and went to looking over Tony Stark then. This wasn't a dead man. This wasn't a living man. She'd seen death in all different kinds of ways, calm death, traumatic DOAs, death on her damn table, and death in the field before they even got that far. But this? This wasn't either of them. The thing about death that made it real different from injuries was that death was the same and called under the same circumstances, and maybe she'd have called this early on, but seven days? Seven days dead, she'd seen seven days dead and it didn't look a thing like this either.

She turned the pill bottle over in her hands, "Seven days ago, what was the last anyone heard from him?" she asked the room at large. "Is there anything, either of you can remember that can help me figure out what he might have taken? Or why?" she asked, her accent thick, her concern sincere. It was the best place to start from her view, maybe the only place.

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propatria
2015-09-17 01:28 am UTC (link)

"That he was working in the lab. I think." And Pepper could correct him if he was wrong, since he had only heard about this mess when worry started to build that Stark was actually missing, not simply absent.

What had been in the pill bottle? That was what he'd been hoping someone else could figure out when he picked it up and pocketed it. "Not sure." Another glance to Pepper. No one in the base had seemed particularly sure what had been in the bottle before it was empty. Stark might have kept it secret. Maybe he was taking something on the quiet, or developing a new drug on his own time. He couldn't recall drugs being a particular interest of Stark's, however. Out of the Avengers, Banner would have been a better candidate for that particular branch of science. He shook his head when Penny asked what they could remember about it. "Could it have caused this?" He didn't know any drugs that could produce this effect, dead but preserved. He didn't hope Stark was alive - hope, in itself, didn't make much sense to him, logically driven by evidence and result. But it did merit investigation.

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saltedand
2015-09-17 06:31 pm UTC (link)

Pepper had thought the couch would help. It would make Tony look as if he were sleeping, until the two women who spoke with calm warmth, as if they could unpick all that was wrong, figured out how to wake him. But it didn't; it made it look all the more wrong. He was still and the woman who examined him, her voice rich as southern sunshine asked why.

Pepper's voice was soaked through and she didn't care about it, anymore than she cared about the slow trickle of wet sliding from her hair ends down her shoulder-blades. Her face was drawn and white and her eyes red but she nodded when Bucky said he'd been working. And this was all awful, but she liked him very much just then; she gave him a look that was gratitude, and sat, on the chair that had been drawn up close, and her fingers knotted together.

"He was ...unhappy." She spoke toward her knuckles, examining them carefully without seeing them. "But I didn't think he would have, not intentionally. He goes off like that, for days on end. It's normal," but the pills weren't normal at all, and Stark Enterprises produced nothing that was designed to kill.

"He does his thing. JARVIS shuts off communication to him on his orders, he'll be gone several days and nothing. He's been doing it more frequently, but I didn't think he was inventing something in particular."

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mareas
2015-09-17 11:10 pm UTC (link)

Clementine, she was crouched next to that couch, listening. Wasn't anything anyone said that made this clear any. Not a damn thing, and she glanced up at Penny with a look that said as much. She did her checking again, vitals and all the things she knew weren't going to be different any. She listened to the redhead talk about unhappiness, and she reckoned there wasn't a whole lot of anything that was useful coming from this.

When she stood, it was James she talked to. Wasn't that she didn't respect the redhead, but it was James that Clementine knew real well, and it was James that Clementine had let bring this man here.

"Honey, this man, he ain't normal dead. He ain't living, so don't go getting your hopes up, but he ain't doing what dead bodies do." She reckoned James might know that. She didn't know a whole lot about her sometimes roommate's past, but she knew he and Matt shared a real affinity for fighting the world, and she reckoned dead folks came with that affinity. "Could be something about him, his body, we don't understand, maybe that thing in his chest has some residual electricity keeping him from going to pieces. Could be something to do with this damn hotel. Could be something to do with what he took. We could do some tests, see if his blood comes up strange, check for any brain activity." Wouldn't hurt any, and Clementine reckoned Penny could draw some blood easy, and it wouldn't be anything to get a lab to do some testing and scanning.

She moved closer to James, voice lower, like the man on the couch might hear. And who the heck knew if the damn man on the couch could hear them. Clementine, she sure didn't have a damn clue. "He might wake up. He might not. Right now, seems more like a coma without vitals than anything else, unless he starts showing signs of decomposition. But we should get him on some fluids, even if he ain't dehydrating, and on some sustenance. Probably should do the regular things to keep from bed sores and clots." Here she did look up. She glanced at Penny, looking for reinforcement some, and then at the other woman, looking for a solution. "But we need somewhere to get him settled. Somewhere with some good medical beds and supplies. I reckon he's got money, and there might be a house or facility can get set up for it?"

But, and this came from too many ambulance rides and practicality. "Reckon give him a week or two, let's take a look at the brain function and blood. If there's no change, then we go from there."

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propatria
2015-09-18 01:19 am UTC (link)

What Clem had to say only backed up what Bucky had already thought, but hadn't dared think seriously about. If Tony wasn't still alive, he certainly wasn't dead in the way he should be.

Her recommendations, fluids, treating him like a comatose patient in a hospital, those all made sense. He nodded to her. She was right. They could run tests, then, and see what happened next. If he stayed the way he was now, it would be a sure sign that something was going on, even if it wasn't life, necessarily.

But was Pepper up for it? He turned toward her. She was the one with the access to funds and facilities. "Is there a place he can go? Safe," he added, though it should have gone without saying. Private. As secret as possible. He kept his tone even, his voice quiet. She was already upset - there was no need to make that worse, but he didn't want to get her hopes up, either. Stark, he looked dead. Just because a few things weren't happening the way they should didn't mean that wasn't still true.

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deployed
2015-09-18 06:41 pm UTC (link)

Six months ago Penny would have said no, there wasn't anything in the world that could have done what appeared to be happening here. But six months ago wasn't now. And in that time she'd seen and heard things that made even less sense than all of this, and she wasn't about to let this stump her. She didn't purport to be some kinda genius, but she wasn't an idiot. She could run tests, she could figure this out. She didn't know how that thing in his chest worked, but maybe it needed a jump start. Maybe whatever he took was some kind of something to keep him ticking until it got one. Maybe he was dead and was just vain enough to want to keep looking good for all eternity. Maybe he wasn't dead and was just really fucking sleepy. Her mind was turning while Clementine was speaking.

"I'll get you a list of what we'd need for the testing, and the care, if that's the route you want to go." She didn't have high hopes, but people deserved answers. Too many times she'd seen people without closure. But everyone was different, and it wasn't her decision to make, and she wasn't dumb enough to promise anything, but tests, at least testing the pill bottle for traces of something, testing Stark. It was something.

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saltedand
2015-09-18 07:32 pm UTC (link)

Hope didn't need much to flicker and it showed, lighting up the sober planes of Pepper's face. A coma was a cliff-edge away from death, but it wasn't death, it wasn't final. Her mind - the very back of it, the place used to absorb the facts scattered in between the flippant patter of the man alive - abruptly stopped stuttering on the necessary requirements for after and set-to on facilities. Yes, yes she could find somewhere to go. Pepper looked now at the blond woman, the first one with an accent she recognized now.

"Thank you. We can get somewhere set up within a couple hours." And gratitude filled her voice, something to do, something that wasn't standing around wondering how to break it to JARVIS that he had outlived his creator.

"There are safe houses." They'd been set up, back after Tony had disappeared the first time. Scattered around the country, and other countries. Places stocked with safe-rooms and doors that closed heavily on threats. But Tony hadn't seen this one coming to close the door on -- or perhaps he had and opened the door to it.

Pepper looked at both women, wrung her hands. "Thank you. You were in the Tower, weren't you?" She looked at Clementine directly. "You helped then. Thank you, for helping us. Helping him."

And practical help was something to seize on. "What would you need? I can make calls, get things moving if I know what you need." The last, to Penny.

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mareas
2015-09-19 04:36 am UTC (link)

Had Clementine known what this woman was thinking, she would have spoke up loud and quick, because this wasn't just a coma, and it was nearer dead than that. It wasn't that Clementine didn't think hoping was important but, like anyone who'd spent time with trauma patients, she knew well enough how bad false hoping could be.

But the woman, she was talking about safehouses and getting places it set, and that was all that really mattered any. "We can sit with him here until you got a place set. James, you go on get anything needs getting." Like she had a place to go telling James what to do, but his lack of talking much lent itself to that kind of thing. "I was in the Tower, and you don't got to go thanking. James is a real good friend, even if he don't talk a whole lot. You go on now."

Clementine she gave Tony one lingering look, and she left Penny to wrap up answering questions. She went to make herself a fresh pot of coffee, and she was hoping maybe Graham had left something stronger in the cupboard, seeing as she reckoned she and Peggy would need it once this was all damn said and done.

And if she scooped and picked up that baby blanket she'd been smoothing down earlier, well, might be no one would notice.

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deployed
2015-09-19 06:34 am UTC (link)

Penny didn't stop Pepper in her tracks of hope but she recognized it on her face clear as anything, she'd seen it dozens of times before. They'd have a talk about expectations later. She didn't know what to expect, probably nothing good. But she was going to err on the cautious side until she had more to go on than poking at the man lying on her cousin's couch. She started writing and listing things out loud. They'd have a lot to get, but it didn't seem like any of it was going to be a problem, so she just kept right on. Watching Clementine leave the room out of the corner of her eye, checking in on her just the same as she checked in on everyone.

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