fade rift. inbox.

[propulsion]

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

sending crystal
written correspondence
private scenes

Comments

[heirring]

Just so.

[With hackles still up, she reverts her attention to the page and begins a new line. It takes a few resolute pen strokes before the bristling parts smooth themselves down again.

So. Yes. Fine. Continuing then.]

Relations with certain individuals aside, if we are to take the thing so literally then you and I might soon find ourselves in an equally uncomfortable position given all the aid we lend to the Venatori. And I hardly see the point in that.

[propulsion]

[ He does think to himself: put a pin in that. But then— ]

Nuh uh, [ he says, pointing. ] No we didn't. We did not.

We were told we lent aid to the Venatori. We woke up one day in a jail cell and we were given memories about how we got there. But I sure as hell don't remember getting nabbed by them. I don't remember agreeing to anything. I don't remember building or innovating. I remember remembering it. Those were the conditions.

But I remember us working out how to get free, and doing that. And everything else that happened in, what, a few weeks of simulation? The choices that were made? That's on them.

[heirring]

[As he's talking, her hand continues on its merry way. Scratch, scratch, scratch says the nib of her pen as it loops its way through delicate loops and lines. It's clearly the same hand--and indeed perhaps the same pen, for she rarely uses any other--which painstakingly drew out those elaborate otherworldly runes and diagrams on the page she'd traded. Diamonds nested within circles within broken lines, like mathematic graphs on a system with different values, or diagrams of clockwork in a place without time, or the alphabet of some language whose fundamentals have gone untranslated.

Her brow furrows as she listens, a wrinkle pinching there. It's followed by another pause (pen up from the paper this time), and Wysteria opening her mouth to object--

And then closing her mouth to squint at the point where the wall and ceiling of the room join together, considering the logic--]

That hardly seems fair, Mister Stark. It is all well and good to say, but the truth of the matter is that some of us were lucky enough to be given memories which were honorable and just and some of us were not. It is far more natural to act in accordance with what one believes to be their practice than otherwise.

[propulsion]

So the game's rigged. I'm not saying we should take 'em out the back or anything—

[ He hasn't forgotten her doodles. Or he did, briefly, honing in on making his point, but now that he's made it and she's scribbling away over there, he tips a look back at it. ]

But, you know, I have a very selective Christmas card list, and they've lost out, that's for dang sure.

Your anti-magic shield was dope, by the way, let's make that happen too.

[heirring]

[From the sound she makes—swallowing a protest so abruptly that it seems like she might choke on it—, this last part is an unexpected turn in the trajectory of the conversation. And surprise enough that for a moment it briefly undercuts her intent for further hen pecking.]

Oh that. It isn't possible. There might be some way of adapting the theory of course—something to do with the Templars and what they do, perhaps? But the form it took in the dream? No.

How do you imagine these to work? It can't be a mage producing the lift; they would be exhausted before it could travel anywhere useful. You need—Ah. [Another note is scratched down in the margins of her page.]

[propulsion]

Yeah, [ Tony says, at her ah, filling in the blank. ] Fun part will be figuring out how to power a sustained heat-based glyph with that much oomph and not catch the whole thing on fire. Oh, the humanity, et cetera.

[ He picks up her notes, watching her write. He has something he wans to ask. More critical than the subject of Venatori treachery, of his slow death she carried herself away from getting too close to, of the substance of the reality they shared together, a month like, five years long.

Nonchalantly; ]

What'd you think about the robot?

[heirring]

Oh.

[She hums, drawing an excitable series of runes in the margins of her notes. A box is drawn about them, presumably to emphasize their importance when she is later reviewing her own handwriting.]

Very cool.

[propulsion]

[ His smile is immediate and genuine if a little compressed, like in resistance to it, keeping his eyes fixed on the pages he's stolen as it happens. That day, Tony Stark's heart grew three sizes.

Papers rustle, and he now lays her notes flat against his chest and turned out so she can see her own rows of runic scribble. ]

So I've been reading this for three minutes and I have no idea what this is.

[heirring]

No, I don't suppose you would. It's a Kalvadan spell diagram. A very basic one, mind. Though I've been refining it for some time.

[Dashing off a last note, Wysteria at last sets her pen aside entirely and raises her attention from the page and the airship sketches. She looks at him.]

Would you like to see how it works?

[propulsion]

[ There is a beat in which the amount of that Tony wants to see how it works cannot be properly quantified and is written plain in his look across at her. Probably the fact he is also exhausted means he can pull off the nonchalant— ]

Sure.

[heirring]

[The line of her mouth pulls sideways and her eyebrows flirt in the direction of her hairline, but she does hin the courtesy of not explicitly calling his bluff. That would be rude.

Instead, Wysteria takes a random blank page from the middle of her stack. She folds it in half once and then lays it open with the fold's crease exposed on the table.]

Lend me something from your pockets, if you please. Something with bulk if you have it.

[propulsion]

Okay David Blaine.

[ Tony pushes both hands into his jacket pockets, coming up with his comms crystal—which goes back in—and a pair of winter gloves. This latter thing he offers with a querying twitch, a glance down at the paper. ]

I'm watching both hands. Nothing gets by me.

[heirring]

I don't know who that is, [is an automatic reminder as she takes the gloves.

There is no showmanship about it. Wysteria simply sets the gloves on one side of the paper, and then closes the other half over them.

Completely.

All the way over them.

The two sides of the folded paper meet flush and smooth, as if nothing at all lived between them that might reasonably make closing the fold—not difficult. Impossible.

Wysteria folds the paper a few more times, making a neat little self secured origami envelope out of the thing. She slides it back across the table to him.]

There.