✷ ✷ ✷ ɐılnɾ ✷ ✷ ✷ (hurlyburly) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2018-06-30 16:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, julia wicker, tony stark / iron man (mcu) |
Who: Tony Stark & Julia Wicker
What: Tony makes an excellent soundboard.
When: Earlier in the week, after this post
Where: The Malibu House
Warnings: Vague mentions of their past.
Status: Complete in gdocs
When Julia said she had a project to work on, she hadn’t elaborated on the nature of it. Her expression when she got to Tony’s didn’t say funeral but deep frown in her lips and furrowed brow didn’t look promising either. She didn’t smile when she saw Tony, which was rare, greeting him with an absent kiss to the side of his face. Also not promising. Julia took the length of her hair and twirled it until she had it in a messy bun at the top of her head. “I need to borrow your brain.” After a beat, she added, “Not literally.” Because with the Tag Team spell they invented or any other number of weird magical things it might have been, that seemed important to clarify. It was not exactly a cold welcome, but it was hardly a warm one either. If Julia had not prefaced their meeting with talk of a project, Tony might really have been worried. As it was, he was still mildly concerned as he led her into the living room. He gestured for her to sit on the over-long sofa while he hovered near the bar. “Drink?” He was trying to gauge her mood. Tony cracked a small, lopsided smile at her clarification. “Borrow away.” Just as Julia had put her hair up, her fingers untwisted the strands and let them fall back down over her shoulders, as though she wasn’t sure which hairstyle was the most conducive to thinking. She sat at the edge of the couch, leaned forward slightly, resting her elbows on her knees. “A drink sounds great,” she said. “Alice from my world got a memory update. I don’t think you’ve met her.” Julia waited until she had a drink in her hand, took a healthy swallow and then continued. “So, it sounds like we sort of get magic back on our world. Only, we also get betrayed by Brakebills, and the library, and there’s a monster even the gods fear that’s after us, except our memories have been taken and none of us know who we actually are or have any way to defend ourselves.” She took another swallow. “That’s basically it in a nutshell. It seems pretty cut and dry. I should take the No Memory Update potion we busted our asses to get made so I don’t wake up one morning and have no clue who I am. But…” Julia took another drink. Maybe it was stupid to be conflicted at all. Opening his wine cooler, Tony pulled a bottle of the rare and expensive Hundred Acre Ark Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon he naturally had cases of in his basement wine cellar. He popped the top and poured two glasses while he listened to Julia outline her predicament. He handed her a glass and sat down beside her. “But?” Tony asked when she had finished. It did seem pretty cut and dry. Take the potion, preserve your memories and your sense of self. But, and Tony could guess this is where she was likely struggling too, take the potion and lose the ability to gain foreknowledge of things to come. Hell, maybe even a solution to the whole fearful beast and memory wipe scenario. Either way, it was a risk. He kept this to himself for the time being, wanting instead to give Julia the space to get everything off her chest. Julia pulled out her phone and used it to access the filtered network post Alice had written. She held the screen up to Tony for him to read or take from her if she wanted. “It’s a group post about what happened and why we need to take the potion, right? There’s zero mention about my being the only one with magic. It wasn’t a secret, it just — Maybe my having magic is a fluke except I know from Marina there’s more to it. So Alice doesn’t mention it in the group post, why doesn’t she say anything about it to me at all? Also it seems convenient that she’s the only one not affected so she’s not taking the memory potion? Q and I sort of brought her back from the dead and she’s been pissed off about it ever since and I don’t know that I actually trust her. Is that super fucked up? Because it feels super fucked up.” Julia looked down at her wine glass. It was far too nice to to down so she didn’t but part of her wanted to, badly. Instead she took another polite swallow. “Let’s say Alice isn’t lying. What if she’s not the one who figures out how to kill this monster? Or what if we find out this potion that takes our memories only has a limited duration? It’s experimental. How is it going to help us if none of us remember how to fix it or the monster ends up in Tumbleweed?” Tony accepted the phone rather than force Julia to keep her hand held up for his benefit. He quickly read Alice’s account of her memories while he listened to Julia give voice to her concerns. The whole thing reminded him of their conversations about the memories the other Avengers received but had skipped over Tony entirely. The receiving of memories appeared to be at random and not indicative of survival as he had originally assumed. There was always a chance that as Alice was the only one to be granted a look through the window into the other universe, no one else would. But of course that was based on a very shaky assumption. He set the phone on the table in front of them and took a drink of wine. “What’s your biggest concern?” His voice was calm and reassuring, free of its usual irreverent tone. “The threat of the creature or to your memory?” Put like that, the choice seemed remarkably easy: “The creature. It’s a potential threat to everyone here. My memory only affects me.” Julia paused. “In the immediate, physical safety sense. If Martin Chatwin or one of gods showed up, it would suck but at least we’d know how to deal with it.” “I see one problem with that assumption.” Actually, there were more than one, but Tony kept his selfish desire for Julia to retain her memory to himself. “You all seem to think that you alone have the means to defeat this thing, when the portal has assembled an entire town with the ability to tackle such a problem, were it to arise.” He was guilty of tunnel vision in the past, of finding solutions to problems on his own. Hell, Natasha had even concluded in his SHIELD assessment: does not play well with others. But he had learned to be a team player, painful as it was. And though the whole experiment had blown up in his face, he could still see its merits. Battling together was better than battling alone. “That creature might be of your world, but the minute it sets foot here, it becomes our problem. All of us.” “I think the means to defeat this thing, if it ever showed up, is going to be from my world. Which means those from my world willing to risk it, shouldn’t take the potion until we know how it plays out. I would ask Q or Eliot to take that kind of risk, they have to be the one to make that choice, but I am willing to.” Julia finished off her glass. “I’ve been thinking about the nature of the realities we come from. Which came first, the world or the media tie in? Like how in comic book movies, the good guy always win, people who die come back, all the other storytelling conventions and cliches that come with that. So… then I think, TV show: how many of them end on a big cliffhanger every season? Okay, it looks bad now, but if this is some serialized story, then there’s going to be a way out of it, right? Is that too crazy to gamble on?” “I think you underestimate the displaced. We’ve faced multidimensional threats before.” Tony shrugged. “It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.” He would not begrudge her choice. Especially when he would make the same one. His heart rate started to quicken slightly when Julia started in on the circular logic of their existence. The existential crisis brought on by the knowledge of his fictional counterparts and the causality dilemma they inspired had sent him spinning out of control and had actually created the circumstances for how the two of them met at that cruise ship bar. And now here they were again. Tony had never really resolved the issue for himself, just pushed it away into the back of his mind and busied himself with work and other avoidances. Tony took a long drink from his glass before answering. “Yes,” he admitted. “But what else do you have to go on?” He fidgeted with the glass in his hands. “You really think there’s a chance it might find its way here?” So far most of the otherworldly troubles had been relatively benign. Not counting the deadly battles on the cruise ship, of course. “If I had I wouldn’t be asking you. I trust you.” It wasn’t the first time Julia had relied on others for their judgement, although it was different in this case. “You’re the smartest person I know.” Julia held her empty glass in one hand, and placed her free hand over his. “We’ve already had dementors show up, a few threats from other worlds. I think the fact there are already people from my world makes that possibility greater.” She thought about it and sighed. “I think we need to learn more about the portal, which you’re doing. Alice has been working with it too. It might not be a bad idea to reach out to her.” Julia had a half of a thought regarding that, but didn’t share it. “We need to learn how to replicate whatever shuts down people’s powers in the portal room. Maybe we don’t need more than that. I don’t know. I know that would do a lot to combat some of the other threats that have come through.” There was a nagging thought in the back of Tony’s mind that told him he was undeserving of that trust. Oftentimes his decisions, while made with the best of intentions, proved to be rather destructive. At times it seemed like he was stuck in an endless loop of trying to fix his past mistakes. He freed his hands from Julia’s affectionate grasp, and threw back the remainder of his wine. Placing his empty glass on the table next to Julia’s phone, Tony got to his feet, put his hands in his pockets, and began to pace in front of the sofa. “So let’s lay it all out. There’s no guarantee that you’re going to get hit with these new memories and the accompanying alternate personas. Just like there’s no guarantee that your Big Bad is going to arrive. But, speaking as the guy who's spent the last several years preparing for the other shoe to drop, you’d be an idiot not to take precautions all the same.” He cracked a small smile. “General you, not you specifically.” “Your magic has a signature,” he continued. “We’ve determined my sensors can detect it. So why not add a scan for traces of magic to the protocol for new arrivals, when they are already under the effects of the portal room’s power dampeners?” He stopped pacing and looked at Julia. “As for the memory cleanse, that’s a bit beyond my purview. Can that potion of yours protect against memories being taken away, or is it for additions only?” Julia’s smile mirrored his own. “I think you definitely want to talk to Alice,” Julia agreed. “It sounds she’s been working on some of the same things from a magical perspective. As for the potion, I think it prevents memory updates. If someone took away my memories the same way it’s going to happen in the future, I don’t know if the potion would protect against that. I think that falls under off-label use.” Julia wasn’t sure if it was Tony’s personality, or if it was because of the things he’d been through, that made him able to deal with these kinds of problems like they were somehow normal. It probably didn’t hurt that he was very pleasant to look at. Julia was especially appreciative of the way the hands in the pockets of his pants pulled the back of them a little tighter as he paced. Julia was smiling now. Progress. They had the makings of a plan. That was enough to help push away any mounting anxiety over the chicken and the egg question once more. “Think you could handle introductions on that end?” Tony asked regarding Alice. “I don’t want to catch a pissy zombie magician off guard. Your little magical clique going to be bent out of shape that you shared this with me?” Tony could handle himself, obviously. But he did not want to make things difficult for Julia. She had enough on her plate. “There are other, non-magical avenues you could pursue, memory-wise.” Tony had not really dipped his toe into the Mutant end of the pool, but he was at least aware of their presence in town and the abilities they possessed. “I’ll make an introduction over the net,” Julia said. “She’s not a zombie, by the way. She is one-hundred percent alive. I guarantee my work.” Technically Mayakovsky played a large role in that spell and made Alice’s new physical body, but then Julia couldn’t pretend to be mildly offended by Tony’s joke. Not that she did a great job of that. There was still a hint of a smile on her lips. “I think with all the insane things that happen with the portal, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a few possibilities worked out in advance, depending on who and how they’re affected. If someone decides not to take the potion from my world and they end up affected, I know a spell…” Julia frowned. “...It’s not very popular with my friends. It sort of almost killed Q. Kind of a long story, I know how to use it without hurting anyone now. It might potentially recover memories hidden or covered by magic. I offered to teach it to Eliot but, like I said, it’s not very popular with my friends.” Tony took his hands out of his pockets and held them out in front of him in a mea culpa gesture. “Sorry. A pissy, formerly deceased magician.” He noticed she did not comment on whether or not his knowing about the inner workings of their universe was going to be problematic. Then again, her scary roommate had given him her seal of approval, so maybe that was all it took. He pursed his lips in thought. “No chance of rebranding the unpopular spell? Make them think it’s something new?” It occurred to him that one way to assure that someone was around to perform any mental cleanup was to have someone outside their universe take on their magic. Of course, that would require volunteers willing to undergo to the Tag Team spell for an indefinite amount of time. Unlikely. “I tried to explain the version of the spell used on Quentin was purposefully fucked up. The Marina in my timeline used Q--” Julia paused, adding, “--and me to make sure Q was fucked enough that the school had to take down the wards so we could break in. I was just starting to learn about magic and I didn’t know how dangerous it was. Not my greatest moment.” Julia had a lot of moments that weren’t great in her past, enough to fill a novel of regret. “Someone else taught me how the spell was supposed to be used, the right way to cast it. I used it to help someone who was catatonic complete their life’s work. It can be safe, and it can be used for the right things. Not that anyone is going to want to line up to let me into their head.” Tony was silent for a moment. A solution was obvious, but it took some effort to give voice to it. He’d had someone meddle in his mind before, and the result had been disastrous. The vision he had been given still gave him nightmares on occasion, most recently after learning about his defeat at the hands of Thanos. The idea of letting someone do it again struck him with very real fear. But he trusted Julia. "Would it help if you could give a demonstration?" He did not volunteer himself. Yet. “I mean, I’m not going to invite a bunch of people inside someone’s head. It’s not the kind of spell you can demonstrate.” Julia shrugged. “I’m not sure how much a reference would help reduce anyone’s anxiety, unless it’s helping them in a worst case scenario and they don’t have a choice.” Tony obviously did not understand the specifications of the spell. His brain was crowded enough, he did not need a party up in there. But something clicked. "B.A.R.F.," he said simply, then after a beat, realized he should elaborate. "It's an acronym. You know how I am about acronyms. Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing. Technology I'm developing. Or, was developing." With the portal setting him up in his Malibu mansion, he had been set him back a couple of years research-wise. He supposed it would have been too convenient for the portal to have also transferred his servers and the R&D department of Stark Industries from his time. "An implant that connects to the hippocampus, projects memories. It was intended to be used as a therapeutic tool for working through trauma." He raised his hand to rub at the back of his neck, his mind racing as if he could figure this all out on the spot. "Could be used to locate magically suppressed memories, it's hard to say." Julia made a face at the acronym, but her expression softened when he explained what the project did. “In theory the spell could do something very similar, but I’m also not a professional counselor or therapist.” She thought about Richard Corrigan, who was dead while his face and body had been used to do unspeakable things, and frowned. “What would we need to get…” Julia paused, as though she had tried very hard to think of a word other than, “B.A.R.F. set up here?” Tony shrugged. “Neither am I. But I never let that stop me.” As for getting a version of B.A.R.F. off the ground here, Tony puffed his cheeks up with air and slowly blew it out as he gave the idea some thought. “An obscene amount of funding, for starters. Maybe not the original price tag, if I can piece together the specs for the final iteration from memory.” His shoulders visibly sagged a bit. Once again, his lack of resources here was getting in the way of his work. “What do you suppose the chances are of my prototype appearing in the portal room with a big red bow and my name on it?” She rolled her eyes briefly before setting her glass down next to his and stood, draping her arms over his shoulders to anchor him for a moment. “If I hadn’t just received the truth key exactly like that, I would have said slim. Did you get anything last time the portal dropped off presents?” Tony wrapped his arms around Julia’s waist, one hand dipping low. He liked the way she was so much shorter than him, even in heels. “A couple hundred grand,” he replied casually. “If this is the portal’s way of clearing out my bank account back home, it’s going to take awhile.” A beat. Then, “So what's the verdict? Has my brain been helpful?” “Always,” Julia said, smiling. There appeared to be an internal debate happening in her mind. After a pause she said: “You know, my friends and I do have bank robbing experience.” She made a face. She was pretty sure Ironman was supposed to stop bank robbers being a superhero. “If the situation is dire enough…” she offered. Not that it had been especially dire the second time her friends decided to rob a bank without her. They’d probably just been bored. Tony chuckled, not entirely sure whether or not she was being serious. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He did not tell her that he had funneled over $600 million into the project. It would take a lot of banks to come up with that kind of cash. “You gonna stick around?” His arms were still encircling her waist. “I don’t have any plans,” Julia said. Wearing flats she had to rise just a little on her toes to kiss him briefly. Her hands carefully combed through his hair at the back of his head. There was a small, nagging feeling that she could wake up tomorrow and not know who she was. Julia mostly looked confident that it would be alright. Mostly. |