The riddle of your heart.

[notawastedlife]

Abated symptoms or not, Tony was aware that time was beginning to press down on him. But he could at least move around without feeling dizzy, he could go out. Maybe he should have been spending all his time in the workshop, staring at data on the screen, but it didn't work. It would help once he had something, but it had to come from his head,

Comments

[honestlyrubbish]

Most of the time, the Compound was a little too loud for Hermione. She'd been told on multiple occasions that it was more crowded than usual that time of year, because the weather wasn't the island's standard fare and not everyone was able to cope with being outside for a long period of time. Some also hated to trek through the snow and strong gusts of cold wind, opting instead to camp out in the Compound, which had everything that a person could really need to last the month- food, books, plenty of beds in case one needed a nap in the middle of the day. But it had all been too much for Hermione, who found that she couldn't use the rec room in peace, and who had immediately taken up a great pile of books in her arms and shoved in a shoulder back as she trekked for someplace else she could keep largely to herself. The rec center had seemed like the best option

[notawastedlife]

It took a moment for Tony to even register that someone was speaking to him, someone in the here and now, not communicating over the years and from beyond the grave.

"I- what?" he said, turning only after he'd spoken, forehead very faintly wrinkled by thought. "No, it's- public space."

Still seeming distracted, he shifted to see what she'd been talking about, now frowning at her notes. "Everyone's leaving notes around, apparently."

[honestlyrubbish]

Hermione sighed, a deep exhale of relief, upon realizing that the man wasn't going to hold the intrusion against her, although there was still a weight in her stomach telling her that whatever had been playing from the projector was probably only meant for his eyes. Then again, she thought to herself, with a look like the one he wore on his face, maybe he could use the company, a fact only further solidified when he stared at the notes she'd taken. They were a strictly organized set, with a section on magic (sorely lacking, considering how difficult it was to procure magical texts from the bookshelf), another on time dilation and relativity (absolutely fascinating, but which Hermione hadn't had the most exposure to at Hogwarts, all things considered), and finally a detailed outline on the island's history itself. Her cheeks flushed lightly

[notawastedlife]

Tony offered up a twisted half-smile. His father, someone important to him? He'd certainly never felt that he was important to his father, which was why he was having trouble processing this new information. As fast as he thought, he couldn't break this revelation down into its component parts, couldn't solve the equation; find X, where X is your father's pride and affection for you. Hell, he didn't know what the equation was.

"Freud'd probably say so," Tony said, with a vague wave at the blank screen. "My father."

[getemtiger]

Mary Jane had been watching for she didn't know how long

[notawastedlife]

Tony turned and stared at her. Your greatest creation, huh, dad? Look what it did. He'd assumed so much about his father, over the years, that he'd started questioning when he got back from that cave. He'd wondered if he'd ever had doubts, how he'd felt about the things he had created, set loose upon the world.

Now Tony wondered how that applied to him. Would his father, looking at what Tony had done, feel like Tony himself had, seeing the Stark Industry logo stamped on weapons in the hands of the Ten Rings?

"Having trouble buying it, too, huh?" he said, leaning back in the chair.

[getemtiger]

The question caught Mary Jane off-guard, albeit briefly. Her dislike for Tony, that much remained steady, but the words themselves, she hadn't connected with what he had done. She'd been too busy thinking about her own past for that, a fact that extended far beyond this one meeting, making her that much less inclined to say so directly. He didn't need to know the circumstances of her life; he had, after all, nearly killed her husband, even if that wasn't her sole problem with him.

"You know, I hadn't even thought that at all," she said. For her part, it was a pretty major admittance, though said so lightly that she hoped he didn't realize it. The last thing she meant to do was extend any sort of olive branch without prompting. She wasn't going to lie to him, though. She liked to think herself above that sort of thing. Only when she added, "It's nice. What he said," did she sound the least bit bitter.

[notawastedlife]

"'Nice,'" Tony said, trying out the word. Looking away from Mary Jane to the blank screen as he did so. He hadn't missed the bitter edge, but he didn't immediately address. Didn't know what to do with it, really -- traditionally, he'd deflect it, glibly ride roughshod over it, but he wouldn't allow himself too, here. He didn't know what to do with any of this. "Yeah. Would be nicer if he'd ever..."

He stopped. "No," he said. "It's nice."

[wildlyconflictd]

"Tony."

Keeping tabs on Tony Stark was what Pepper did best, and she had recently made it her principle occupation. That she'd found him, even in so unlikely a location, wasn't remotely surprising.

Standing just inside the door, she was leaned back against the wall's dark wood paneling, regarding him soberly across the expanse of worn shag carpeting. What she thought of Howard Stark and his purported legacy, she would for the moment keep to herself, focused instead on that of his son.

[notawastedlife]

He turned in the chair, directing the same slightly bewildered intensity that he had at the screen across the room at Pepper.

"He never- I don't get it," he said. "I don't get that. Never so much as a hint, and then... this. How do you feel something like that, and never-"

He stopped. The irony had made itself apparent. Maybe he could follow some of that reasoning -- or reluctance, he supposed, it was not entirely a question of cold logic and equations, the calculating decision-making that he had always assumed to be the complete picture of his father -- he could understand it a little more, with Pepper right there staring at him.

[wildlyconflictd]

"Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?" Pepper said, her voice quiet but gaze still steadily fixed on Tony. She'd not force his hand, not again, but she wasn't about to let him forget that the ball was still squarely in his court. "Unfortunately for Howard, I think it may be too little, too late." For that, she wasn't sure she could ever entirely forgive him.

She pushed from the wall and walked over, tugging her scarf from her neck as she went. "You look tired," she pointed out, a needless observation these days; he always looked tired, anymore.

[notawastedlife]

"I am tired," he admitted, sitting back, still frowning at Pepper as if she were a problem of a similar order to the one he'd been trying to solve before her entrance.

She was, really. Pepper, his father, the arc reactor... cheesy as it was, everything wrapped back around to his heart.

"He left notes, too. Unfinished. He was looking for something, or he found something and couldn't do anything with it." He paused. Changed track. "Pepper..."

Didn't immediately finish. Equations he couldn't solve, that ran out and became empty pages.

[daretodo]

With Crowder in tiki jail for the next two months and school out 'til January, I've had a fair amount of free time on my hands, what little work I have with the Council not all that consuming now that everything's settled down again. I've spent so many months in this place trying to better the community at large, that I haven't had much of a chance to focus on bettering myself. Skills that used to come second-nature to me have fallen to seed from too much time spent in the clinic, and lately, I've been trying to get myself into the habit of taking a few hours for myself each day to try to rebuild all that I've lost. Mostly, it's running. Sometimes, when I'm sure I'm not being followed, I'll try my hand at web-slinging late at night, an exercise that's seen me bruised more often than not. Today, though, it's the rec center. Lifting weights used to be a little beneath me, seeing as I could bench-press cars, but here it doesn't strike me as a half bad idea, and I'm sure I saw some sort of bow-flex thing in here once

[notawastedlife]

Tony didn't startle, being too intent on his own thoughts to come out of them in any rush, but he did eventually turn, Peter's words filtering in, being considered on a parallel line of thought to the several occupied by his attempt to place this declaration of his father's in his memory of the man.

"You think that's not an epitaph?" he said, tilting his head at the blank screen.

[daretodo]

"Maybe, but not his," I say, though the second the words leave my mouth, I regret them. Sometimes, it's hard to remember there's a man inside the armor of Tony Stark, calling all the shots behind an impenetrable barrier of glib remarks and low expectations. Moreover, there's a boy, too, seeing a glimpse of his father. There's not much I wouldn't give for a similar opportunity, but this right here isn't about me, or whatever laundry list of troubles Stark's put me through since the yacht incident. This is about him. And whatever complicated feelings I have towards the guy -- anger, resentment, guilt -- don't really matter, because I was taught not to kick someone when they're down.

Wincing almost immediately, I hold up a hand to stave off a reply, an apology on the tip of my tongue. "That's-- You didn't need that. Sorry. But you... don't believe it, do you?"

It's not actually a question.

[notawastedlife]

"That I'm his 'greatest creation'?" Tony said, which was a question, a clarification. "He helped invent a pretty good atom bomb."

And he'd invented the arc reactor, come up with a solution to the energy needs of the world, one that he couldn't put into action because he didn't know how to make it work. And the world remembered him for the atom bomb and the weapons.

I never asked him if he had doubts.

[un_gloved]

Rogue was in a strangely zen sort of place. She had absolutely no idea what day it was, she wasn't sure why there were certain bruises on her person, and she was sure her hair was getting shorter some days, but there wasn't really a way to tell. What she knew was, she was perfectly lucid at the moment, and no one could do anything about the times she wasn't, so there wasn't much point in bothering anyone with it.

She hadn't seen Tony in what felt likes ages, or at least she couldn't remember seeing him. The way he looked now, she felt a little guilty for it.

"That your daddy?" she asked gently, coming up over his right shoulder and crossing her arms beneath her chest, chewing on the corner of her lip.

[notawastedlife]

Tony didn't immediately look around.

"That's... him," he said. Strange moment of visible pride or not, he couldn't use the word daddy, and not just because it seemed out of place for a grown man. Even ironically or whimsically, it didn't seem to describe Howard Stark as Tony had known him.

But then, whimsical certainly didn't.

"Somewhat unrecognisable in sentiment."

[un_gloved]

"Didn't get on much?" she asked, finding the arm of a chair to perch on. She drew a knee up to rest her chin on.

"I take it this stuff's news t'you, courtesy o'th'island?"

[notawastedlife]

"Didn't talk much, did not share our feelings," Tony said, "and I was pretty sure he didn't have any. Who does that?"

Well, there was him, but that was beside the point he was currently making. If he was talking to someone else he might have thought twice about the irony.