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[propulsion]

"You have reached the life model decoy of Tony Stark."

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[acreage]

He nods as Tony answers -- yeah, he's heard, seen, some of this between the last time he'd broached the subject and now. No more hopes of the Roci flying through a rift, improbably, for him. No part of this answer is new, exactly, but it does help confirm some things.

"Something like that," he agrees with some amusement, though pauses at the question. Not that there's any reason not to answer, when he'd instigated this conversation; he's just out of practice, with this subject. "Medical implant," he admits a breath later, with no pointed glances at, say, Tony's chest. "I figured it was about time I find out what the Fade did to it."

[propulsion]

Tony's head tips to the other side.

He can identify that pause for what it is, especially in retrospect, the answer that follows. One of those things you don't talk about much, possibly at all. Tony feels too casual, all of a sudden, in his lean backwards, stiff-armed and slack posture, but doesn't move out of it despite his own piqued interest.

"What kind of medical implant?" is the natural follow up, spoken like one, overly patient in affect.

[acreage]

His eyebrows lift.

Though it's more self-effacing than anything to do with Tony's attention. Derrica's concerns came with good reason, as had Naomi's.

"Normally," with some wryness, "an injection port." One running on batteries, incidentally, something else without answer here. "But it seems to have been doing some heavy lifting since I got here. It glows like lyrium, which is new," obviously, "and I haven't needed any medications. Apparently."

This isn't even uncommon knowledge back home. Everyone in the system -- and beyond, now -- knows he was on Eros. But this conversation is a different thing in a world where oncocidals aren't a standard part of any ship's medbay inventory.

[propulsion]

Tony's attention bounces around Holden, then, the tops of his shoulders, his wrists, the flat plane of his chest, like suddenly he will see something he's missed this whole time. Like he doesn't know how possible it is to conceal the telltale lyrium.

"You're gonna have to break that down for me," he says. "Being of a primitive, earthbound peoples. What kind of medication are we talking, how is it accessed, can I peep it."

He is rolling up out of his sit, collecting the book as he goes, closing it.

[acreage]

The weather's been warming up enough lately that it's easy to snag a sleeve of his shirt and pull it upwards. Near where his arm slopes into his shoulder is a small, distinctly metallic circle. It sits over a raised bit of skin, triangular, something clearly just below the surface. And, of course, it's all lyrium-blue glow.

He says, "I caught a lot of radiation a few years ago. Oncocidals do a good job of managing the long-term damage. But I think we're probably a few centuries out from Thedas developing anti-cancers."

Do they even know about...DNA? Cells? He shrugs. Then,

"Unfortunately, I never did develop any superpowers."

He's funny! Right, Iron Man? This is definitely the moment to crack a joke.

[propulsion]

Tony rolls forwards in his sit to squint at that little raised patch of hardware under wetware, the little—port, lets call it. The familiar illumination of ethereal blue. His attention doesn't pivot to Jim when he explains how it came to get under there, manages to put together through context and etymology what the heck an oncocidal is meant to be, and refrains from prodding it.

Just kidding, but he does raise his hand, wiggle his fingers in warning, and then prods it. Just a little. It's very scientific of him.

"That you know about," he quips, immediate and ahead of the rush of feeling some kind of way, swiftly on the rise. "What about anything else, since you've been here? Symptoms, signs? Now that you've had six months to fuck around and find out."

[acreage]

There's a slight raise to his eyebrows, but he mostly bears all and any poking with some amount of grace. Or, maybe, just the acknowledgement that he did in fact wait six months to fuck around and find out what the shape of this conversation would be.

There's the feeling of metal, or plastic, or something hard just beneath the surface of the skin — not unexpected, probably, from appearances.

"Nothing that I've noticed." And then he points out, "If there were symptoms, I wouldn't have come to you first."

A healer would make more sense, after all. There's the implication that he might not have said anything, to Tony, in that situation; and if he's noticed that, he doesn't try to deny it.