WHO:Emma & Tony WHEN: Now WHERE: The shared Lab in Grimoire WHAT: Emma's collecting Excalibur, Tony gets in the way. RATING/WARNINGS: Violence, snark, murder, character death STATUS: Complete
Emma Swan was a reasonable woman. She often took matters into her own hands for the sake of all, her savior complex most definitely an aspect in which she could no longer escape. At times, it wasn’t something she wanted to escape. It was a facet of her personality to help people, to try and save people where she could. It was how she’d become so involved in the daily lives here in the city.
It was what brought her to this here and now.
Sometimes helping people happened in curious ways, sometimes it was different from initially thought. Emma was aware of the power in her own magic, the light magic she was beginning to cultivate and build. She had a better understanding now in just how she could use that power. Just like using this power.
The Dark One power was like nothing she’d ever experienced before, the total and utter surety of her power, the confidence that it gave her, the knowledge that the Dark One’s before her bestowed on them so easily. Emma understood more about this magic after a short time than she did about her own magic after almost a year. Likely because of the nature of this magic, but that was neither here nor there.
Right now, they were utilising what they had, the power that she and Killian controlled was far greater than anything that any of these people would understand. And with that meant that those who were ignorant of the methods being worth it for the end result, those with their moral high ground and steadfast belief that they knew best, regardless of other people’s experience.
Which was why Emma had been operating mostly in the shadows, largely letting Killian distract the others while she went about gathering their needs, Killian flexing his magic and hopefully working through some of the anger he felt towards her. She had Isaac, he would be their blood of the damned, someone having been to hell and back, which rightly in this place anyone could’ve been used. Still, with Isaac’s heart ensuring he would do as she needed when she demanded it, Emma only had one last thing to obtain in order for her and Killian to be sure this worked, with no interference.
Excalibur.
Knowing that the towns people had found out, that they’d learned how to use the promethus flame to forge the dagger and Excalibur together, sealing the sword to it’s power and to Emma and Killian’s power, they had what Emma dearly needed and that just wasn’t able to be left as it was.
Finding the laboratory that the Lutece’s were now sharing with the Stark guy, Emma entered in a gathering swirl of smoky cloud, not needing to use doors was a plus side to all this certainly. The lab was interesting, that was for sure, although she hardly understood just what the twins were working on at any given time. She knew exactly where Excalibur was, the sword calling to her, just like her dagger had called to her, long before it was joined with it’s other half. She also knew she wasn’t alone in the lab, but whether is was one of the twins or Stark was yet to be seen. Either way, Emma would be leaving with the sword.
Had he known the full spectrum of the situation Tony might have rolled his eyes. There was still time, and it was probably going to happen eventually. But really? Dark magical being coming to take a thing from him to enact their plan of ‘this is really whats best’. He didn’t remember sticking that category on his resume, or ‘projects’ section of his Linked In.
He’d really have to update that when he got home.
Friday notified him there was another person in the lab, he’d been going over a few things like the zombie creatures and random hubub tossed here and there over the intercom. Cap wasn’t all too pleased with the dead walking (if anyone was). Just a lot of theatrics, guessing, and what nows. As usual he didn’t have a lot to go on other than the artifacts, books, and pieces left behind.
The town was full of them. What was useful? Hard to tell, given the predisposition for fuckery.
Stark set down his work on the messy bench, gaiting around the desk towards what he thought was a soft touch of footsteps on the linoleum floor. “That’s a new look. Is 90’s peroxide bleaching back? I always considered maybe some frosted tips back then but nah.” He’d seen and heard Emma around--she usually kept things as cordial as they could get. She and Cap bumped heads but he couldn’t really blame her. He was something of an old fashioned idiot sometimes.
“Can I help you Miss Swan?” According to the network she’d been ‘missing’ and bits and pieces thrown around in the mix were ‘dark magic’ ‘hush hush’ ‘taboo’. Tony liked to get things from the horse’s mouth.
Stark. Oh, Emma knew so little about this one, and yet it seemed to be enough at the same time. Hero type, smart, technology based. Different time frames from the twins, to be sure, but still. A complication.
“I certainly hope so.” She knew where the blade was, knew that they had both ends of it if not already having joined them. The place was deserted save for this one, which was good. “You have something of mine.” To the point, at least, she figured that was their best option here.
She’d be leaving here with her sword, nothing would stop that, it just depended entirely on how that came about.
“You have two options,” stalking along the space, which was basically how she moved, fingers touching everything as she passed, “Give me what I want, or get in the way.” And the implication was there that getting in her way was not a smart choice.
“Uh, alright?” Certainly there had to have been an evil overlord starter pack that included the dialogue for said wrong-doers. They bought the same book from the same dime-store shelf that Cap and others liked to take their Kellogg’s box sayings with. Tony felt like he’d heard them all a million ways by now.
That, or he just was so far along in mental capacity he didn’t have it in him to play cops and robbers anymore.
He could only guess she was talking about the great and treasured knick-knack everyone had been herding for. There always was one. Now it’d been passed off to the delegated smart folks to poke at it until they could figure out how to close the case on this Nancy Drew book.
Tony was used to the cocky, all powerful prowling and kept still in his lazy stance against the desk, folding his arms neatly over his chest. The mental note of the suit and it’s location behind him was taken. He’d already calculated just how long it’d take to call on the armor and suit up. “What if I said I didn’t know it was yours?” In this very rare case the items actually had names on them. Very inconvenient for the fact that he couldn’t use the very obvious ‘didn’t see your name on it’.
“Better yet, I’m going to plead the fifth on this one. Jury’s still out on what’s whose and what with whom’s things are we going to do. Bet if you came back tomorrow we could have a solid answer.”
Regularly, Emma would enjoy the humour, the snark and sarcasm, the wit in the attempts to shift attention. She did it herself. There was something so utterly enjoyable about banter at the least appropriate time for it. And really, if you were going to have a ‘famous last words’ moment, why not make it something witty?
“Then I’d say you were stupid, and I already know, you’re not a stupid man, Mr Stark.” Anyone who kept up with the twins, who advanced on them, was in no means stupid. Emma didn’t keep up, she knew she wasn’t dumb, but intellectually she wasn’t at that level, nowhere close.
The fact that she could easily rustle up a fireball right that second, burn the building from the inside out, it stirred a smirk from her. Painted red lips upturning just a little. “You battle a lot in your own world, don’t you? Fighting your good fight, saving the world?” She knew a little about these hero types, and while Rogers infuriated her on a basic level, she’d never really butted heads with Stark. “Wouldn’t you like to go back to that without having to see what death is like here?”
At least Emma wasn’t throwing her head back and cackling, or tossing magic spells from her palm. Yet.
Though Tony would agree that no death was preferable to the maybe-death that people experienced around here, but woke up a few days later. No death at all would be just great. He would have liked to say that he wasn’t afraid of death, and from a logical standpoint he wasn’t, but after enduring some minor PTSD after the Attack on New York...well, he couldn’t say he was completely without his anxieties.
“I mean, wouldn’t we all?” His shoulders came up into a shrug, both palms lifting nonchalantly. Ugh. He was going to get choked again, wasn’t he? They liked to do that. Stir the pot a little, grab his neck, give him a squeeze. Loki choke, Aldrich choke, Thor choke...admittedly, nothing could possibly be worse than a Thor choke.
It would take more than that to get him to crack. Stark may have been many things, but he wasn’t a coward, and he would never give up another life for his own. “I’m curious though. Why the swords? This whole time no one can make a dent in this place, but we’re going to cut it open with pixie dust and swords? Humor me here.”
Emma just rolled her eyes, the logical types and their answers. Everything had to make sense, scientifically. It all had to slot into perfect little boxes with the right explanations as to why. Despite the fact that they’d been so rudely removed from their own worlds, left in a stasis of unknown origin with strange, horrible and demonic things going on around them.
But still, there was the logic.
“It could be a sword. It could be a pencil. It could’ve been a flower. It doesn’t matter what the item is, it matters what it does, what it contains. Not it’s use, it’s purpose for those blinded by what should be allowed, but by what it can be, what it’s potential holds.” Reasonably, Emma had been one of those people, refusing to see beyond what she was raised to believe was possible, unwilling to accept the possibility that there was more to the world than what she knew.
Her eyes were opened to that, rather rudely there too. But she saw things, she opened her eyes and she saw it. And now here she was, on the cusp of opening everyone’s eyes, so they saw their own worlds again.
“Now, are you moving, or am I going through you?”
Aha, there was the crazy cult speak in action. Just what he was waiting for.
With a small sigh, as if knowing what was coming next (because he did, he was a futurist, let’s be real), Tony reached out to call the gauntlet of his suit to his hand--mechanics forming up to his elbow, repulsor beam humming as he pointed it out to her. For such a mouth he had Tony didn’t really want to get into fighting. There was a thing about hitting women, wasn’t there?
He just knew the type that wasn’t worth the banter. He’d held out and now it was time to keep her from what probably should have been protected better. “Sorry, I’m really fond of this spot. It’s got the perfect amount of air circulation, and it puts a good space between sane and insane.” The rest of his suit would be ready when he called for it.
They were predictable, believing they were right, that they had the answers. Just getting in the way really. Emma didn’t have time to sit them down and use small words, didn’t have time to justify her actions to get them out. Everyone wanted a solution but no one wanted to make the sacrifice. Well, it was past time for giving them the option.
“Magic versus science, round two.” They really didn’t learn.
Emma didn’t necessarily want to kill the man, but he was causing a hold up, and she was less than pleased with that. She wasn’t as wary with her magic anymore, wasn’t cautious of the destruction she could do, or hesitant with the force she could use. Everything around her was thrown out of the way, tables and technology and anything within a foot of her was tossed to the walls with little more than a thought.
“I gave you a chance, I really hope you make it back before we leave. I’m not sure what would happen if you didn’t.” Death was so very unpredictable around here. Using her magic, Emma flicked out her hand to throw Stark aside, her usual white light of magic taking a smoky dark appearance instead.
This was the kind of shit that really gave Tony a headache. Why when people tried to argue ”What the hell were you thinking trying to make the world safer” when other beings possessed the capability to toss him into the wall like a rag doll whenever they had a temper tantrum. It wasn’t even fair.
It didn’t mean that Stark wasn’t used to getting thrown around like a rag doll, and fuck it hurt, but he managed to summon the pieces and fragments of his suit around what would now be a bruised human figure, before pushing himself up onto his feet and firing a repulsor to Emma’s back.
“I guess it’s really no more a gamble than you’re taking, isn’t it?” Charge the unibeam. Repulsors weren’t going to do anything here--ahem, Cap? Clint? Backup? Friday was doing her best to reach them but the Wicked Witch of the Bleach was pretty quick.
The thing about being the Dark One wasn’t just the incomprehensible power, that was a bonus. The fact that they were beyond the power and understanding of so many people, that even they were yet to fully learn their own abilities to their truest extent, it wasn’t the part that really struck Emma as beneficial.
No, it was the near invulnerability that came with it. Sure, the blast to her back was a damn nuisance, knocking her forwards away from her path, unsteadying her. The armour under her coat took a lot of the force, allowing Emma to turn to face Stark with a decidedly disinterested eyebrow raise. “Seriously?”
There was trying too hard and then there was just being an idiot. Most people didn’t take the hint with the first tap, but by the second shot it should be clear. Emma let her anger build up, snarling just a little as the magic left her in a fireball the size of her torso, straight towards Stark.
No, she didn’t want to kill him, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t.
Fire wasn’t the worst she could throw at him. At least the suit was built to stand most thermal heating--not in a volcano (he had another suit for that), but it wasn’t about to melt. Friday’s schematics were going crazy and Tony had to keep it together to kick off his rockets and dodge the dragon breath.
The twins weren’t going to be happy but in the face of life or even temporary death, the lab was the least of Iron Man’s concerns.
Problem in that there wasn’t exactly a lot of flight space. Stark managed to get a decent hoover, he could clink into a few doo dads and wall objects here and there but it wasn’t meant for the suit to be flying about. “Don’t come at me with that tone of fire ball, you started it.” Up came the suits electrical charges, firing at Emma with the intent to shock.
Killing wasn’t what Tony aimed for, he could only hope the suit’s attacks were enough to keep her at bay.
At the first sting of the electric charge, Emma puffed out in a cloud of grey, disappearing from in front of Stark and reappearing behind him, using her magic to put force behind her hand and grab the suit from the back of the neck to throw it through a few tables before launching another one at him.
Really, was it so hard for these people to just stop? Why get in the way? Why make things more difficult? She just needed her sword and then it could be done with, she and Killian could make things end. But everyone else had their own ideas and agendas and they knew best.
“You know, you’re really starting to piss me off.” And maybe this was the power that Rumplestiltskin got so addicted to, the drive that turned Nimue’s heart so permanently black. But right then, Emma was just too focused on getting what she wanted to care.
Ouch. He hated the cloud poofy magician crap! By now Stark was convinced anyone weilding magic was predominately a douchebag of some sort. It just didn’t come with a set of nice morales and if it did, they were soured by something or other, leading him to battle them in a not-so-far kind of way.
All the pissing and moaning was done internally, as Tony knew that he couldn’t give Emma an ounce of satisfaction in knowing he didn’t want to do this anymore than he did.
“Are you sure it’s me? I was just in here minding my own business.” He grunted, rolling under the next fireball that singed the protective coating on the suit. It was shielding his squishy human body but even from behind the alloy that shit was hot. What was really concerning was that Emma seemed as though he’d given her a static shock from a carpet instead of the crippling jolts emitted.
Totally not fair, and very uncool. Not to mention worrisome as he was running out of an acceptable arsenal to combat her. Luckily for Stark, never out of ideas. “I’m no doctor but I can recommend a great shrink. No joke, the man can work wonders if you’re actually willing to spill your grill.”
The suit hummed with life as Iron Man turned and shot a unibeam from it’s core. Unlike the repulsors, extremely lethal, but Tony couldn’t mess around anymore.
It was just a shame they were in a concrete building doing this, a shame for her, less so for Stark. Emma couldn’t control the ground the way she might’ve wanted to, couldn’t call on nature that way she might’ve manipulated it in the forest. No, she had tables and lights and walls. Not impossible to use, but less effective.
The next blast was a little more potent in its power, knocking Emma back into the wall, her back slamming with the energy from the beam crackling over her. It was painful, and pain was still something Emma could feel, but it couldn’t kill her, Emma knew the magic wouldn’t let it, her magic would counteract whatever happened to her now, to the point where she’d be forced to live through it all.
He had the one thing that could kill her and he didn’t even know it.
Forcing herself to vanish again, getting out of the beam long enough to gather her magic again and get between Stark and her sword. Just in case he had a brainwave there. She didn’t have time for this though, and he clearly wasn’t about to drop the comments and let it go. Which meant last resorts.
“I’d much rather spill your grill.” With the added strength being the Dark One gave her, Emma grabbed the suit by the throat, ripping off the face mask with the other hand and exerting her magic to choke the air out of Stark. “Could’ve avoided this you know.” She’d rather not pop his head, but as the magic coursed through her, Emma’s eyes darkening, the red around her eyes rimming them more with the building rage and power, Emma gripped tighter, the magical chokehold growing stronger.
There were plenty of things that could’ve been avoided. Had Stark had the time to fully understand what kind of hoodoo the sword had going on, maybe he would have used it. Everyone was so caught up in confusion and feelings towards their on again off again friends acting like hooligans that nothing had been properly explained or taken into consideration.
Hindsight just wasn’t going to do anything for him now. Not even the suit’s strength could pry away at Emma’s magical grip. With air fleeting from him, Tony could only sputter and struggle, clawing at the unrelenting hold at his throat. Even kicking, firing off rogue blasts to her hands and face...until there was no air left to sustain movement, or life.
There was something that twisted, the moment Stark’s breath stopped stuttering out of his chest, the moment his heart stopped fighting to keep beating, despite the deprivation of much needed oxygen. Something clicked in Emma, something deep inside, under all the power and the new look and the steady drive of knowing what she needed to do.
The lab was a mess, more so when Emma dumped the body to the ground, still half contained in the suit that was so very useless against her power. It was done. The obstacles were removed and Emma’s path was clear. She’d given him the chance to step aside and he hadn’t, that was his own fault, not hers.
Now she had her own job to finish.
Crossing to her sword, both parts of the blade merged together and waiting for her, so very helpfully provided for them, Emma snatched it up, feeling the magic sing through her veins at the first touch. One last task and they’d all be getting out of here. With a single smirk, Emma disappeared in her cloud of grey, leaving just the destruction behind her.