✷ ✷ ✷ ɐılnɾ ✷ ✷ ✷ (hurlyburly) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2018-03-08 17:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, julia wicker, tony stark / iron man (mcu) |
Who: Tony Stark & Julia Wicker
What: Neither one handles “being a story” particularly well.
Where: One of the ship’s bars
When: Backdated: February 27th
Warnings: Mentions of PTSD, sexual assault, death. Unhealthy coping mechanisms (alcohol).
Eliot came over and stayed the night Julia found out. He had wrapped his arms around her, and perhaps because of the products he used, his scent made the closeness comforting. The sat huddled by the door smoking cigarettes. Julia had no desire to move but early morning came, Eliot somehow convinced her to get some sleep, and he left, promising to be back if she needed him. She slept about an hour, then she messaged Kady. If she could have, Julia would have stayed hidden away in her room until they were at the next port. Perhaps longer, maybe Texas where she could hide herself in the cottage after that. Sometimes she saw Reynard. His yellow eyes gleamed at her and sometimes Richard’s blood dribbled down from the god’s lips. Julia closed her eyes and waited until the flashes went away. She just had to breathe, smoke another cigarette and wait for it to pass. It would pass. She could do this. But eventually, Julia had to eat. Not that she particularly wanted to eat, but she could perhaps get a few things to horde in her room, meaning there would be less need to leave it in the future. Rather than shower, Julia put her hair up in a messy bun. She wore leggings and a t-shirt, both black and barely bothered with a pair of slip on shoes. But instead of going somewhere with food, Julia’s feet guided her toward one of the many bars. The first one looked crowded, a group that looked like they were friends but she didn’t know or recognize them. So she tried the next and wandered aimlessly until she found whatever looked the least busy. Her voice was still ragged from last night’s crying. To the robot bartender she said, “Can I just get the bottle?” Unspoken: to go. Alcohol had calories, right? Julia looked briefly around the bartop to see if there were any snacks she could snatch. Then the nagging voice in her head telling her to get something more substantial would shut up, right? Tony had been sitting at the bar longer than was fashionable. He had long since tired of trying to initiate small talk with the robotic waitstaff after quickly discovering that they had been programmed with about as much charm and personality as the security droids had been. So he had taken up the challenge of trying to get the bartender to start repeating his script with the fewest number of questions asked. He had just finished another round of questioning when Julia ambled up to the bar. He observed her closely, noting all the telltale signs of an emotional hangover. Reaching out to grab a handful of the pub mix from a nearby bowl, he tossed a sesame chip into his mouth and asked, "Rough night?" He had no idea what time of day it was. It could have been 20 minutes or 20 hours since he first cracked open the half empty bottle of single malt sitting in front of him. He peered out at her from behind a pair of dark turquoise-tinted glasses that had magically appeared in the closet of his room along with a number of other items from his wardrobe. As always, they were an effective mask to hide behind; his eyes always betrayed him. Julia had seen the back of Tony, but phased it out until spoken to. The voice and face were distinctive and she may have jumped slightly when the realization that she was staring at a famous movie star’s very famous superhero character was speaking to her. Julia was way behind on the big tentpole movies, but she had seen the first Ironman movie when it had come out. Her then boyfriend took her to it. Twice. “Jesus Christ,” she exhaled. “Tony Stark.” Because she knew that much. She couldn’t be friends with Quentin and not know at least that much. Deciding he owed her after miniature jump scare, she made a gesture with her fingers and his glass slid quick with a light audible scrape along the bar and into her hand as she finished off what was in it before setting it down with a satisfying clunk in front of him. “I…” Julia started and then decided she needed more alcohol to speak. Saying the actual words was too hard. There was a tremor in her fingers, making it a little more difficult to pull out rolling paper and tobacco, but another gesture with her fingers and she had a perfectly rolled cigarette. “You could say that,” she finally decided on. A wicked sort of grin formed on Tony's lips when he realized he had startled her. He shrugged dramatically as if to apologize, though it was not immediately clear whether he was apologizing for the scare or for being Tony Stark. "In the flesh." Because apparently, that was not always the case. A new fact that, despite the overindulgence in scotch and preoccupation with the barman bot, was still at the front of his overactive mind. Her stunt with the glass caught him off guard, something he would have been able to hide a few drinks ago, but as it was, his surprise was momentarily writ clearly on his face. He recovered quickly, however, and while she conjured up her cigarette, Tony poured two fingers of scotch from the bottle in front of him and sent the glass sliding across the counter towards her, the liquid sloshing messily around the glass but not spilling over the lip. "So what's the story with all the..." and here he moved his hand in a gesture that mimicked the one she had used for her cigarette. He looked away from her to snap his fingers at the bartender, signaling that he should bring a new glass. Returning his attention to Julia, he popped the remaining handful of pub mix into his mouth with his shaking left hand and balled his hand into a fist until the trembling stopped. His previous two encounter with conjurers had left him understandably cautious. Julia put the cigarette to her lips and since he’d placed a glass in front of her in addition to having fine taste in scotch, she sat down in front of it. Snapping her fingers produced a flame just above her thumb and she lit her cigarette. Another brief series of quick gestures and the smell of the smoke would not linger on either of them, though hobbit tobacco smelled much more pleasant than the human varieties back home. “Hedgewitch,” she explained. As though that were an explanation. But deciding to demonstrate and not think about what else was happening in her life, Julia inhaled from her rolled cigarette, made a series of gestures at her lips with her free hand, and when she exhaled, created a perfect smoke ring in the shape of a five pointed star. Julia flicked the smoke ring with her fingers and it broke apart into several, smaller stars before dissipating into the air. At least he hadn’t heard of her. If she noticed the trembling in his hand, she was very good at pretending not to. "Hedgewitch," Tony repeated, as if the word amused him. "That a particular brand of hocus pocus, or do you just have a thing for shrubberies?" While the snap of her fingers may have made fire, his had produced another glass by way of the bartender. He poured himself a finger of scotch while the smoke-shaped stars dissolved into thin air, thought better of it, and made it two. When he finally did decide to call it quits, he would swing by the medbay for a banana bag before turning in. Julia shrugged. “I guess it’s not important. You smoke? I stocked up on tobacco when we went to Middle Earth,” she offered. She made a quick calculation, looking from Tony, to the bottle, to his glass. She thought about saying something, but wasn’t sure how to bring it up, so she buried the words instead and took a healthy swallow from her new-to-her glass. "Long as 'it's not important' is shrubwitch for 'I come in peace.'" Tony raised his glass to her in salute then took a drink. He was not particularly in the mood for a physical or mental drubbing from another witchy woman. From out of nowhere, the voice of Billie Burke as Glinda rang in his head. Are you a good witch, or a bad witch? He pushed it away with the lyrics to "Witchy Woman" with a shake of his head that also served as a partial answer to her question. "Not regularly. Did partake in some of that Southern Star pipe-weed before we left." It had been a peace offering of sorts from Bruce Banner. Julia flinched just slightly and looked down into her glass, “I guess it depends on who you ask.” She had to remind herself on repeat, he didn’t know her, no one knew her, and if they did, no one would say anything to her. What was there to say, really? “I know a hangover prevention spell when you’re on your last glass?” That was sort of a peace offering, wasn’t it? Julia took a drag from her cigarette and exhaled, the smoke refusing to linger around them. The nicknames didn’t seem to bother her. Maybe because shrubwitch was a lot nicer than the usual hedgebitch that she was called. “I’m Julia, by the way. I guess introducing myself would also show I come in peace?” She forced a smile, that didn’t quite make it to her eyes. Tony could tell he had struck a nerve, but instead of leaving well enough alone, he prodded. "And if I ask you?" He cocked his head to the side, studying her as she wrestled with something. He had been seeking a distraction, and assuming this did not end with him being forced into some sort of psychedelic crisis, this dark and twisty girl with a taste for booze, cigarettes, and magic seemed a far more promising diversion. At the mention of the hangover spell, his left eyebrow arched up from behind the frames of his glasses. When she first approached the bar, she very clearly already had one foot out the door. Now it seemed as if she was planning on sticking around. "That depends. Is it an actual prevention spell, or will I be hangover-free because you've turned me into a newt?" He matched her forced smile with one of his own. "Well, Julia, there's still the matter of that advantage you have over me. And I don't mean the magic." His voice managed to sound far more jovial than he appeared. "Seems you are already familiar with me." She didn’t answer right away, searching for her words carefully. “I wasn’t sure what to think when I got here. There were people from Star Wars and Harry Potter and, I thought, having my story out in the open like that would be my worst nightmare. I thought I was just lucky or maybe not important to be known in some other dimension?” She took another swallow from her glass. “Turns out that’s not the case. I would bet everyone here is in the same position. Some people are just more famous than others. Only, I don’t get to be famous for saving the world. I get to be the girl who was raped by a god and betrayed--” She hadn’t actually meant to say the words. She hadn’t said them outloud since she arrived on the ship. “--everyone to team up with our version of Voldemort because he supposedly had killed a god before. And, I keep thinking about how it’s going to look. I’m in a book series, it’s also a TV show. I’m really excited to hear from someone how that looks. To get a confirmation if I’m one of the villains of the show or not. PTSD is good for drama, right?” Julia finished off her drink and reached for the bottle, because after finally getting that off her chest she needed another drink. The girl had been relatively short on words up to this point, so the last thing Tony expected was a full on word vomit. Or for her concerns to so closely mirror his own. "I'm going to level with you, Julia. I only followed about half of that. But if it makes you feel any better, I've never heard of you." It wouldn't, he knew that. But what he needed for himself was to normalize the notion that he was somehow a fictional character from a film series. Her remark about PTSD gave him pause. "It does make you wonder what sort of sick bastard is writing for us, doesn't it? Boost his inner turmoil and it'll boost the ratings!" He took a healthy swallow of his scotch and watched her help herself to his bottle. The bartender had obviously put a hold on her earlier request for a bottle, but at this rate, they were going to need it. Julia’s eyes went down to her stolen glass. There were no uncomfortable looks from Tony, no you poor things or any other kind of response which would have been completely normal that she had no interest in receiving. With a sigh, she felt a great spring of tension release. It was nice to feel a little more normal. And now that she had said the words, she didn’t feel the need to repeat them, regardless of if he had understood. “Yeah, I’m sure the flashbacks are really compelling,” Julia said flatly. This time she’d spilled a little as she poured. Her anxiety was keeping her adrenaline pumping nearly so fast on those nights she woke up from terrible dreams, which meant she was going to be able to get decently drunk without her body betraying her and attempting to keep her alert. If he felt sympathy for her, Tony was not the kind of man to show it, at least not in a traditional sense. "Expensive, too, I'd imagine. Got to cue up the gratuitous special effects to designate a dream sequence every time." When he noticed her sloppy attempt to pour, he reached out to hold the glass, moving it to follow the unsteadiness in her pouring hand as if he had lots of practice at that particular maneuver. "This portal plop you down with any friends from your world?" Julia nodded. Once she had the glass about half full, she stopped pouring. Luckily she had Tony to help her. It was a nice enough scotch. She wasn’t far above the five foot mark and petite. She was the kind of person to make Tony feel tall after standing next to all of the Avenger’s Adonises all day. “Yeah. They kind of avoided telling me some things until recently.” Julia wasn’t upset about that precisely. She would have preferred sooner or not at all. But there was no changing the circumstances now. She took another generous swallow of alcohol. Maybe robots could scoop her off the ground and take her to her room later. She wasn’t terribly concerned with the logistics. Tony was hardly in a position to cast judgment, but as Julia continued to pour, his eyes did widen a bit as he wondered if she would be able to cast a hangover prevention spell for herself. Maybe they would both be needing a banana bag before too long. "Did they all take the news as well as you?" Though he had been onboard for about a week, he had not been especially social, preferring to lay low until he had fully worked out the friend or foe situation with the others, but also wanting to look into this place a little more closely. It may have been a warmer, sunnier destination than the cold, emptiness of space on the other side of his first portal, but he was still not convinced that it was no less dangerous. He had spent a couple days in the brig for his efforts, and no real answers for his concerns. Just new ones to accompany them. But if this was his new present for the time being, he ought to become more acquainted with its inhabitants. "Are they magic types too?" To the first question, Julia shrugged. She didn’t know. Perhaps they had, and they were just being good friends by not getting into a misery competition with her. Perhaps they hadn’t, and they just understood at least on some level, why the idea of having Julia’s story in particular out in the open was an unpleasant possibility. She stared at her glass for a while, having forgotten about offering the hangover cure, looking at it for answers that did not suddenly reveal themselves. To the second question, she nodded. “They also come in peace?” Julia frowned at him and took a slow drag of her cigarette. She’d been facing him when she exhaled, but thanks to her minor enchantment, the smoke went elsewhere. “What’s your problem with magic?” Tony instinctively blinked when she exhaled the smoke from her cigarette in his direction. A needless reaction, but one made by a man not yet accustomed to the presence of magic. Based on her question, he gathered Julia was not entirely familiar with his history. "I've seen what it can do," he offered vaguely, looking past Julia to a spot of wall behind her head. Then, after a beat, he looked back toward her with a weak smile. "Someone with powers got into my head once. Left an impression. She got into my friend's head, too, and we nearly killed one another and partially decimated a city." He threw back the rest of his scotch, but did not move to refill his glass. "She did not come in peace." Julia frowned and nodded. Having been the one in someone’s head once and nearly killed them, Stark’s concern was not unreasonable. “There’s a patch,” Julia said, pointing to the back of her own neck. “Keeps that kind of magic out. You want me to look into it for you?” Julia took his glass, poured a very small amount of alcohol into it and traced her finger over the rim while chanting something. He hadn’t asked, but Julia was still sober enough to pull it off. She did the same to her own glass, deciding it was probably best she finish it off. “Spit in your cup. Drink it. No hangover.” Julia picked up her own glass and demonstrated first, swallowing the rest down. It did not make her anymore sober, but then that wasn’t really the effect she was going for. She just didn’t want to be more miserable when she woke up in the morning. "Yeah, sure," Tony nodded at her offer. "Thanks," his voice taking that tone that made it sound like he was doing her a favor instead of the other way around. He watched as she worked her magic on the two glasses, watching her demonstration before even reaching for his glass. This was either a brilliant or terrible idea. And despite his actions of late, he had not gotten to where he was by playing it safe. And so he picked up the glass, spit into it, and with a poorly pronounced "Alla tua salute!", swallowed it down. "If this turns me into a newt, I hope it's a poisonous one." He sat still for a moment, expecting to feel something, but when nothing happened, he gave a shrug and reached out for some more pub mix before nudging the bowl toward her. "So how long have you been on this booze cruise?" He did not want to continue their earlier line of conversation, commiserating in their shared misery. "I just spent the last two days whittling a bar of soap in the brig, so needless to say, I need to find a better way to occupy my time than my previous pursuits." He hoped that maybe she had been here a while and could give her a different lay of the land than he had scouted out for himself or had cheerily explained to him by the bird-shaped Captain America. “A little over two weeks,” Julia said. She was mostly hoping Tony was too drunk to remember how the conversation started, what was said. Julia didn’t think she was quite there but given the lack of food in her system, decided not to push it. Given his remark about soap, she shrugged. “I planned on studying. There’s a lot of magic users from different worlds. Why not learn everything I can while we’re here.” Once she felt comfortable facing more than one drunk superhero at a bar. “Things aren’t great back home. I kinda hoping there’s something I can learn that will help me.” She didn’t pour herself any more alcohol. So she only had a week or so on him. No matter. He had plans to touch base with some of the resident tech-heads to compare notes, including a multiverse kid version of himself. Strangely, Tony had found it much easier to roll with the presence of his alternate than just about anything else he had been confronted with since being swallowed up by the space portal. "Harry Potter types, right?" Tony had noticed a number of them during his brief perusal of the network before he got himself thrown in the brig. He had never read the books or seen the movies, but of course had a vague pop culture awareness of them. "And Stephen Strange lost his medical license but apparently went and got himself a doctorate in sorcery? That ought to make society functions more entertaining." The two men had a passing acquaintance with one another, their paths often crossing at charity events and the like. They tended to keep their respective egos on opposite sides of the room. Julia nodded. Tony talked a lot. He had a nice voice and she would have been content to listen to him ramble on about anything to keep herself from having to think about anything important. “So his name really is Stephen Strange?” Julia asked. Given what the other magic users said and how they talked about him, she had a vague impression that he was kind of a big deal. Still, she couldn’t help the mildly intoxicated grin on her lips. “I didn’t realize you were from the same place. Maybe if your name was something like Tony….” Julia’s eyebrows went up as that joke got away from her. “I need a T word. The more ridiculous the better.” "So you've heard of the good doctor. Destined for greatness with a name like that, right? Or ridicule. Potentially both." He munched on the pub mix as he considered her question. "T..." His mind was whirring at its usual frenetic speed, but owing to the amount of alcohol coursing through his system, it took him longer than it should have to pull out something useful. "Torsion? Tony Torsion? Is alliteration a thing?" He stopped to think for a moment. Pepper Potts. Happy Hogan. Bruce Banner. Peter Parker. Son of a bitch. "Oh, that's just lazy writing! Or child cruelty." He shook his head. He still was not sure how all of this worked. Were they all someone's creation or just the inspiration? A couple of hours ago, this would have put him at the edge of a tailspin, but as it was, now he just wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all. "Wait, shouldn't it be an A word? For Anthony?" “Tony Tank?” Julia offered. He was Ironman, after all. “I mean, does anyone even call you Anthony?” Julia said, as though it should be obvious that Tony would have a T last name. Julia finally took a piece of the pub mix and popped it in her mouth. Given the look on her face when she did, she regretted the decision instantly. “You actually like this?” Tony made a face at the tank suggestion. "Not if they want to hold my interest," he admitted. "Teflon?" A little irony. He shrugged. "No, it's disgusting, but," motioning to the bar around them, "we're a little lean on options." He could have, of course, gotten up at any point and sought out food. Maybe even convinced one of the robo-butlers to bring him something. But at the time, filling his body with liquor and cattle feed seemed like the thing to do. Julia rolled her eyes. On one hand, Tony’s observation that their options at the bar were technically limited was one-hundred percent correct. On the other, he seemed like the kind of guy that needed people to roll their eyes at him occasionally. “Tony Torque?” Julia said, when the word popped into her head. This was definitely a game she preferred playing to replaying the made for tv version of all her worst life experiences in her mind’s eye. Over their years together, Pepper had turned rolling her eyes at Tony into an art form. It was a reaction that he needed and expected, so Julia's eye rolling earned her a signature Tony Stark half-smile. At her suggestion, he touched a finger to his nose with one hand and pointed a finger at her with the other. "There it is! Tony Torque. Print it. Put it in lights. That's the one." He had not been the one to come up with the Iron Man moniker, so he was not particularly phased with this new development. "What about you? Do you get an appropriately applied alliterative a... name?" That sentence got away from him. “Julia Wicker,” she said, with a shrug. “No one’s parents hated them enough on my world, I guess.” Eliot Waugh. Quentin Coldwater (almost). Jane Chatwin. Reynard the Fox. The last name popped into her head before she could turn it off. Her smile looked a little more forced and though it would destroy the hangover cure spell, she seriously considered ordering another drink. “So what are you going to do now that you’re here?” she asked. He didn’t have to give her a real answer, just a long one. Something to keep him talking and pushing the limits of his drunken wit. It wasn’t as if he was terrible to look at. "Julia Wicker," Tony repeated slowly, as if by learning her full name, he could now size her up properly. His eyes went to the shelf of liquor behind the bar, reading the labels. "Julia Jameson makes you sound like a porn star." He looked around them for any other ideas. "Jacuzzi? J is more difficult than than T." He covered his mouth with his hand as if he were in deep thought. "Clearly the only option available to me is to figure out a way to hack into the robots' programming, turn them against my enemies, and take over the ship. A good old fashioned mutiny. There's even a plank up in that climbing course. It's not a mutiny unless you threaten people with walking the plank. Then we set sail for..." he looked at Julia. "Where do you want to go?" The names got another eyeroll. Julia Jameson did sound like a porn star name. But to be fair, so did Tony Torque. “Your enemies?” Julia smirked. “What enemies do you have here? And, obviously the answer is Hogwarts. I want a wand, to get sorted into Ravenclaw, and try butterbeer. I don’t even care if I’m American and too old.” Julia followed Tony’s gaze to the bottles of alcohol behind the bar. “No more liquor or the spell won’t work,” she warned. "I was looking for name inspiration, not a drink. But good to know. Use that spell often?" Drinking to excess had gone in and out of vogue with him over the years. There had been a few cruel mornings in recent months, after the fallout from Zemo's plot, where the spell would have come in handy. As it was, he had been mostly sober as of late. But nothing quite like a one-way space portal to a cruise ship full of angry people to make you fall off the wagon. "You know, enemies." He gave a vague hand wave. "A mutineer always has to have enemies." He truly knew of only two or three people on the ship who actually meant him harm, but so far he had kept his distance and they had done the same. Though, sooner or later, it was a truce that was likely to be broken. In one way or another. "Hogwarts it is. The way they turned Middle Earth into a bastion of commercialism, I can guarantee there is a Harry Potter equivalent somewhere around here. We'll get you sorted and beered and whatever else they can charge you money for." He held up his wrist to display the band that was used as currency on the ship and in port. "I hope they don't expect us to settle up after." The portal had not seen fit to transport his considerable fortune along with his wardrobe. Maybe there were still a couple hundred stashed in the pockets of some of his pants. “You’re rich, right?” Julia smirked. She stood up, a little less than solid on her feet but after a pause and not falling over backward, she mentally declared victory. “Next time just bring someone magic with you. Stop time or whatever. Freeze them in their tracks. Then you can do whatever you want to the robots. Easy peasy.” Julia gave him two thumbs up, whether the type of spell was actually easy or not was hard to say. It might have been sarcasm or drunken confidence. He turned down his nose so that he could peer at her with bloodshot eyes over the top of his glasses. "Extremely." A shrug. "Not that it matters, stuck in another universe." It took him a moment to realize what she was getting at. He had not found much during his earlier look-see, but nothing that he had uncovered was anything to be alarmed about. Still, he was understandably concerned about the nature of the robots and any potentially dangerous quirks in their programming. "You offering? That sounded like an offer." “When I’m not drunk,” she said. Though she wasn’t sure why she was promising. The alcohol was probably helping in that department. Anything to keep busy or to keep from thinking. “Or hungover.” She added with a very important finger point to the air. “Or doing important magicky things.” Then she caught his eyes and they felt like a reflection of her own. Maybe worse from an extra decade or two of bad habits. “Hey,” she said. Her voice was quiet as she made a pact. “We’re going to be okay.” |