We'll figure it out. Can you tell if it's any specific kind of pain? [ It might help her narrow down what she needs to get him more of, because there are several different options here for what could have run out. Nothing was supposed to, but drugs aren't always precise in how long they work. ]
You didn't have to get up, I was coming back, I promise. [ She doesn't want him to have worried about that, chose going when he was supposed to be asleep for a while both so that he wouldn't know what she was doing and so that he wouldn't worry about her at all. But he's not letting up on his question, she has to at least try to play it off as she rests a hand on his forehead to check his temperature, crouches down by his chair. ] I was out running some errands. All done now, I'm not going anywhere for a while. [ She'll have to do better next time, that's all. ] Do you want to head back upstairs?
Sharp? Intermittent. Mostly when I move. It's just achey when I'm not. [ There's also where his metabolism is weird in some places. Benefited in some respects, a little more than contrived in others. ]
I know. [ The answer is quick, because she was, he knew that. He knew she was coming back, that wasn't - that wasn't the problem. It's just that she wasn't here in the first place. Whether she was coming back or not was irrelevant, because she was coming back - or, she was coming, for the first time, but coming - before too, and it didn't stop anything. He doesn't resist her hand on his forehead, just keeps watching her as she moves. Although, she's closer now, and he's tired, not blind. Maybe it's shadows. ] Whatever works. Are you okay?
Okay, I'll see if you can even have another dose of anything yet. [ Some of them need to be pretty strictly kept on timetables for safety purposes, after all. The next round is coming up in a couple of hours, but hopefully there will be something to give him to help temporarily at least.
She's watching him carefully during that quick response, biting at her lip a little bit. That wasn't the intention, but she doesn't know what other way would work. If she told him she was going it probably wouldn't take away the problem, would just leave him aware of it the whole time. She doesn't want that. ] Me? Doing a hell of a lot better than you right now, I think. [ Just play it off as a joke, right? ] Do you want to wait down here until we get you fixed up or move back upstairs first?
[ But he's watching a little too closely, paying just too much attention, and she actually would rather he was drugged again right now. He's not supposed to know this. ]
Only a little bit. Ran into something. Come on, let's go back upstairs.
[ Tony has a habit of getting into things he's not supposed to get into. It's one of his skills. He's not really bought that answer, but he does want to go back upstairs, so he starts to move towards that purpose. ]
Running into stuff usually just makes swelling. What'd you hit? Also you don't run into things.
[ She extends her arm, helps him up even while maintaining her distance a little bit. She doesn't feel like moving closer to his senses, especially when some of that blood he's smelling is going to be hers and quite possibly still flowing given that she's been moving and she hasn't actually looked at any of the scrapes at all beyond ensuring that nothing was going to kill her from blood loss. ]
There was a sharp edge on something, I guess, I don't really remember. Come on, let's go.
[ Max, if you're worried about his senses, standing another three inches away from him isn't going to make any difference for you.
He doesn't have much to spare for talking while they're actually in motion, and saves whatever reply he has for that until he's being deposited back into the bed he's gotten so tired of being in. Nonetheless, he gratefully sinks back into the pillows face first for a few seconds before rolling back over to get back under the mussed covers. It's then that he returns his attention to her, because he doesn't have anything else to do. ] Liar.
[ Yeah well she can't just leave him. That's not okay, she's been trying to help him this whole time, that's the point of all of this.
So she gets to entertain the hope that he's dropped it for a little while, but as he says liar she sits down on the bed next to him, sighs. ] I'm fine. Nothing serious, I promise. A couple scrapes and bruises.
[ That's good, because he's sort of counting on your help to get back upstairs, it just seemed like a point that bore mentioning.
Honestly the sigh feels like it says more about whatever this actually is than anything else. He lets himself fully appreciate the pillows, his ridiculously high count sheets - because on a sentinel's bed, it's just really nice to have something that won't bother you even if you don't feel like crawling out of your skin, and besides that, he's Tony Stark, he'd have these fucking sheets anyway - and the way he can sink into the mattress but still be supported, and then drags his attention away from the relief into the nagging suspicions. He has almost zero idea what they mean, but they're there, and for all his intellectual, logical rationale, he's always, always been a creature of instinct and gut intuition. ]
[ She's smiling a little at that appreciation from him, the fact that he's at least in a little less pain being back up here in his own bed. She'll have to get up in a moment to check over his cocktail of meds thoroughly and figure out if there's something she can do to help him now that something's wrong out. There may not be anything, but she hopes there'll be a way.
But he's being really persistent right now for some reason, and she doesn't really like lying to him, never has. She just wishes he'd stop pushing. ]
Bad guys. They're not relevant anymore. I think I might be able to give you a dose of one of these, let me check.
It won't be on the news. They know how to clean up after themselves.
[ She's taken that into account. There wasn't any time to stay and watch, but there are cameras planted in a few key areas, tracers on the bodies. She'll at least method of disposal for the people she killed and maybe even get a few new faces and names beyond the ones she already acquired from the house tonight.
Her expression had sharpened too much. She lets it soften again, rereads a bottle's instruction's carefully just to make sure she's got it right before she gets a glass of water, moves back over to him. ]
Seriously, I'm fine. The most I've got is a bruised rib, and I'm not even sure he could kick hard enough for that.
You going out to take care of some bad guy tail without me? Impatient much? [ And it's said with some levity, but he's not always that great at injecting that sort of thing properly - it tends to be too brittle when it comes around his teeth, hits the air at an awkward angle and falls flatter than the affect from which it was given. In certain cases, of course Tony Stark can fake his way through, but at times like this when he doesn't actually want or see the need to? He doesn't need to trick her into thinking that he's okay with whatever she's avoiding, because he isn't. That's actually the part he wants her to be aware of.
And he is genuinely glad that she does seem to be okay. He... mostly trusts her to actually take care of herself if she's seriously injured, if only because it's less annoying to heal up properly and therefore faster than it is to be stupid about it. ] Must have been pretty important to drag you away from your nightly bedside vigil without so much as a note.
You know me. Never very good at patience. [ It's a blatant lie, given how often she manages to exhibit patience when he's directly involved or on stake outs or waiting for a break in a case or under questioning, but she says it like it's trying to be a joke and succeeding about as much as the effort he put into actually maintaining levity in what he just said.
That's pretty much a completely accurate summation towards how she takes care of herself, yeah. But she's coming to the realization that he has no intention of letting this go, and she'd feel too guilty if she kept lying to him and trusted the drugs to make him stop asking, and this wasn't supposed to go like this at all. ] They weren't acting on their own initiative. The people who took you. [ She's trying to keep her face ducked away from him, left in shadow, trying to keep the rage she can't quite keep off of her face out of his view. ] Someone was giving them orders.
[ She's highly patient under certain circumstances; when under others? He would argue that she is quite impatient. It depends on the context, certainly, but occasionally other things as well. When she wants an answer from him and he is unwilling, he would argue a veritable and distinct lack of true patience, in tandem with probably a sense of stubbornness to potentially rival his own. Maybe. On a cloudy day or something.
Either way. It doesn't matter. What does matter is the way she finally starts answering his questions, be they the obvious, or ones that he was trying to be nice about and couch behind several opposing turns in a set of road directions. He's not actually sure how to process what he was just told. Anger's pretty high on the list, but his own form of anger tends to be fairly well ensconced within reasonable arguments, else it looks like the disorganized, unfettered rage that it actually pretends not to be. Luckily, at the moment, he has little energy to spare for the truthful sentiment - the falsehood of composure is far easier a thing to maintain in the thick of things after all. ] Anyone specific? Or did they just want the usual? The method of questioning provided a lot of detail to be be wanted.
[ Well, there are certainly moments when she's not at all willing for other people to get in the way of what she wants to know, even if that person is him. Particularly, sometimes, though she feels she's fairly patient in making him give her the answer she desires. Reasonably so, at least.
She's fairly certain he's not as okay with it as his fairly neutral tone indicates, but she'll get to that bridge whenever he starts being openly upset. For the moment she'll just answer his questions, hold out the glass of water and pills to him. ] That's what I'm looking to find out. Well. Inbetween ensuring that they don't have the means to ask you anything ever again.
[ She is. She remains fairly patient in terms of the manner she handles and deals with him and his own distinct lack of the same.
He accepts both, pills on the back of his tongue before he sips just enough water to coat his mouth and get them down. Afterward, he holds onto the glass half because he's not sure what he wants to actually do with the rest of the water, and half because he's not thinking about the water at all anymore. He's processing, and while normally he's more than capable of multi-tasking, more or less, right now, things aren't going so smoothly. It's a few moments of pause before he continues on with the conversation. ]
Have you been hurt before now? [ It's a question, at least. It's the top of his questions, but far from the only one that he has. ]
[ She was expecting more questions, sits down on the bed next to him and tucks her legs up, clasps her arms around her knees. Still avoiding his eyes more than a little because she can tell he's not okay with it, but solidly there next to him. That question gains him a little unpleasant twitch of her mouth though, not really wanting to answer. ]
It's only the second time I've been out on this. You know me. They can't touch me.
[ Yeah, he knows what she's saying in the spaces between what she's deliberately not saying. He's a pro at playing that particular game, okay, you don't try and play a player. He sips a little more water - nightmares and a general aversion to water exacerbated recently mean that he's more or less in a constant mild state of dehydration, but what else is new? - and considers the tactical benefit in trying to be taciturn that everyone's always trying to convince him about.
Ah, fuck it. He comes to the same conclusion in regards to that as he usually does. Whatever restraint is coming from her being nice and nearby and hey apparently that's still necessary for him right now, and because he... Okay, it's not lack of forethought or concern for her reaction - he's just tired. ] Looks like it. That red stuff goes on the outside, right?
[ Tony, come on here. Can't you just let her get away with things a little bit? A tiny bit of playing the player? It's totally fine, seriously, everything's okay and he doesn't have to say -
Anything. Goddamnit. Fine, sure, they can do this conversation if he really really wants to. ] There were a lot of them. A couple landed punches, a couple broke skin a little. Look, do you want to see? They barely even qualify as injuries.
[ He doesn't technically want to, really. Like, at all. ]
Not really. I believe you, I just needed to hear it. Gotta have a reason to trust the statements, right? Seeing and all that. Although please don't show me. [ He doesn't want to see the proof and pain on his behalf, even if he technically had absolutely nothing to do with it and wasn't even aware it was happening. ] You didn't need to.
[ Yeah, see, there they go. She's silent for a little bit, and if the placement of her arm across her stomach is casual it's actually carefully placed to conceal the few small scrapes she accumulated. ]
Yeah, I did. [ Straightforward, calm. It's simply the truth as she sees it. She's generally good at seeing the grey, but when it comes to this there's only black and white. ] You're mine. Nobody gets to hurt you. I have to make sure everyone knows that.
[ Wow rude. Hide things from him like that, even though he actually just sort of asked you to. He didn't mean you had to literally hide your injuries, just that it wasn't necessary to blatantly expose them.
And okay more wow. He doesn't even sort of know what to do with that. It hits much deeper than he thinks was intended - not that he thinks it was meant to hit at all, but it's like that time she made him sit down and lie back and shut up and listen to a small lecture on his own sense of worth and he's never really prepared to handle things like that. So, effectively, he's finished with the conversation for a little while. At least until he comes back online from the power surge. ] Okay.
[ Hey she was already doing that. The offer to show him was less of an actual offer and more of a 'put up or shut up' thing, because she doesn't want him to think about it or worry about it. Stick to the other parts, Tony.
She shrugs, leans over to run a hand through his hair and press her lips to his forehead. ] I'm sorry. I didn't want you to worry.
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You didn't have to get up, I was coming back, I promise. [ She doesn't want him to have worried about that, chose going when he was supposed to be asleep for a while both so that he wouldn't know what she was doing and so that he wouldn't worry about her at all. But he's not letting up on his question, she has to at least try to play it off as she rests a hand on his forehead to check his temperature, crouches down by his chair. ] I was out running some errands. All done now, I'm not going anywhere for a while. [ She'll have to do better next time, that's all. ] Do you want to head back upstairs?
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I know. [ The answer is quick, because she was, he knew that. He knew she was coming back, that wasn't - that wasn't the problem. It's just that she wasn't here in the first place. Whether she was coming back or not was irrelevant, because she was coming back - or, she was coming, for the first time, but coming - before too, and it didn't stop anything. He doesn't resist her hand on his forehead, just keeps watching her as she moves. Although, she's closer now, and he's tired, not blind. Maybe it's shadows. ] Whatever works. Are you okay?
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She's watching him carefully during that quick response, biting at her lip a little bit. That wasn't the intention, but she doesn't know what other way would work. If she told him she was going it probably wouldn't take away the problem, would just leave him aware of it the whole time. She doesn't want that. ] Me? Doing a hell of a lot better than you right now, I think. [ Just play it off as a joke, right? ] Do you want to wait down here until we get you fixed up or move back upstairs first?
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[ Also fast, but there's not much else he can do. He doesn't want to be loaded up with drugs rn, and she can tell, she's trying, but still. ]
Whichever works. Are you bleeding?
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[ But he's watching a little too closely, paying just too much attention, and she actually would rather he was drugged again right now. He's not supposed to know this. ]
Only a little bit. Ran into something. Come on, let's go back upstairs.
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[ Tony has a habit of getting into things he's not supposed to get into. It's one of his skills. He's not really bought that answer, but he does want to go back upstairs, so he starts to move towards that purpose. ]
Running into stuff usually just makes swelling. What'd you hit? Also you don't run into things.
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There was a sharp edge on something, I guess, I don't really remember. Come on, let's go.
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He doesn't have much to spare for talking while they're actually in motion, and saves whatever reply he has for that until he's being deposited back into the bed he's gotten so tired of being in. Nonetheless, he gratefully sinks back into the pillows face first for a few seconds before rolling back over to get back under the mussed covers. It's then that he returns his attention to her, because he doesn't have anything else to do. ] Liar.
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So she gets to entertain the hope that he's dropped it for a little while, but as he says liar she sits down on the bed next to him, sighs. ] I'm fine. Nothing serious, I promise. A couple scrapes and bruises.
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Honestly the sigh feels like it says more about whatever this actually is than anything else. He lets himself fully appreciate the pillows, his ridiculously high count sheets - because on a sentinel's bed, it's just really nice to have something that won't bother you even if you don't feel like crawling out of your skin, and besides that, he's Tony Stark, he'd have these fucking sheets anyway - and the way he can sink into the mattress but still be supported, and then drags his attention away from the relief into the nagging suspicions. He has almost zero idea what they mean, but they're there, and for all his intellectual, logical rationale, he's always, always been a creature of instinct and gut intuition. ]
From?
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But he's being really persistent right now for some reason, and she doesn't really like lying to him, never has. She just wishes he'd stop pushing. ]
Bad guys. They're not relevant anymore. I think I might be able to give you a dose of one of these, let me check.
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That would be great. I didn't hear anything on the news?
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[ She's taken that into account. There wasn't any time to stay and watch, but there are cameras planted in a few key areas, tracers on the bodies. She'll at least method of disposal for the people she killed and maybe even get a few new faces and names beyond the ones she already acquired from the house tonight.
Her expression had sharpened too much. She lets it soften again, rereads a bottle's instruction's carefully just to make sure she's got it right before she gets a glass of water, moves back over to him. ]
Seriously, I'm fine. The most I've got is a bruised rib, and I'm not even sure he could kick hard enough for that.
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And he is genuinely glad that she does seem to be okay. He... mostly trusts her to actually take care of herself if she's seriously injured, if only because it's less annoying to heal up properly and therefore faster than it is to be stupid about it. ] Must have been pretty important to drag you away from your nightly bedside vigil without so much as a note.
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That's pretty much a completely accurate summation towards how she takes care of herself, yeah. But she's coming to the realization that he has no intention of letting this go, and she'd feel too guilty if she kept lying to him and trusted the drugs to make him stop asking, and this wasn't supposed to go like this at all. ] They weren't acting on their own initiative. The people who took you. [ She's trying to keep her face ducked away from him, left in shadow, trying to keep the rage she can't quite keep off of her face out of his view. ] Someone was giving them orders.
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Either way. It doesn't matter. What does matter is the way she finally starts answering his questions, be they the obvious, or ones that he was trying to be nice about and couch behind several opposing turns in a set of road directions. He's not actually sure how to process what he was just told. Anger's pretty high on the list, but his own form of anger tends to be fairly well ensconced within reasonable arguments, else it looks like the disorganized, unfettered rage that it actually pretends not to be. Luckily, at the moment, he has little energy to spare for the truthful sentiment - the falsehood of composure is far easier a thing to maintain in the thick of things after all. ] Anyone specific? Or did they just want the usual? The method of questioning provided a lot of detail to be be wanted.
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She's fairly certain he's not as okay with it as his fairly neutral tone indicates, but she'll get to that bridge whenever he starts being openly upset. For the moment she'll just answer his questions, hold out the glass of water and pills to him. ] That's what I'm looking to find out. Well. Inbetween ensuring that they don't have the means to ask you anything ever again.
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He accepts both, pills on the back of his tongue before he sips just enough water to coat his mouth and get them down. Afterward, he holds onto the glass half because he's not sure what he wants to actually do with the rest of the water, and half because he's not thinking about the water at all anymore. He's processing, and while normally he's more than capable of multi-tasking, more or less, right now, things aren't going so smoothly. It's a few moments of pause before he continues on with the conversation. ]
Have you been hurt before now? [ It's a question, at least. It's the top of his questions, but far from the only one that he has. ]
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It's only the second time I've been out on this. You know me. They can't touch me.
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Ah, fuck it. He comes to the same conclusion in regards to that as he usually does. Whatever restraint is coming from her being nice and nearby and hey apparently that's still necessary for him right now, and because he... Okay, it's not lack of forethought or concern for her reaction - he's just tired. ] Looks like it. That red stuff goes on the outside, right?
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Anything. Goddamnit. Fine, sure, they can do this conversation if he really really wants to. ] There were a lot of them. A couple landed punches, a couple broke skin a little. Look, do you want to see? They barely even qualify as injuries.
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Not really. I believe you, I just needed to hear it. Gotta have a reason to trust the statements, right? Seeing and all that. Although please don't show me. [ He doesn't want to see the proof and pain on his behalf, even if he technically had absolutely nothing to do with it and wasn't even aware it was happening. ] You didn't need to.
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Yeah, I did. [ Straightforward, calm. It's simply the truth as she sees it. She's generally good at seeing the grey, but when it comes to this there's only black and white. ] You're mine. Nobody gets to hurt you. I have to make sure everyone knows that.
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And okay more wow. He doesn't even sort of know what to do with that. It hits much deeper than he thinks was intended - not that he thinks it was meant to hit at all, but it's like that time she made him sit down and lie back and shut up and listen to a small lecture on his own sense of worth and he's never really prepared to handle things like that. So, effectively, he's finished with the conversation for a little while. At least until he comes back online from the power surge. ] Okay.
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She shrugs, leans over to run a hand through his hair and press her lips to his forehead. ] I'm sorry. I didn't want you to worry.
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