fe_male | memeboxing

[ If, at any point in time, she has to fill out a 'things you hate most about living in a world with superheroes' list, number one on the list is going to be how you can just be walking down a street and find yourself caught up in some kind of battle or - what even is this? She's really not sure. Bank robbery gone wrong, whatever, she doesn't care, because there was screaming and then -

Well actually, she's not sure she remembers most of what happened in the past ten minutes. Which could be a result of someone hitting her kind of hard in the head from behind or could just be because adrenaline had whited out everything, fight or flight response and hers always had tipped towards fight.

There's someone lying very dead on the floor of the alleyway she's in, and the knife in her hand pretty much indicates it was her that made him that dead, especially since no one else is here at the moment. She's not really sure how she got in an alleyway. She'd been with Tony, they'd been in the street. She thinks they'd been laughing. Maybe the dead guy had tried taking her as a potential hostage and that's why they're in an alleyway, he'd been trying to get out of the area. She would have been standing still with the initial panic of the crowd flooding her, she would have been what looked like an easy target, especially if the crowd had managed to separate her from Tony.

Tony. Finding him, that's what's important, making sure he's okay, but her head is pounding and there's still panicked people everywhere pressing in on her mind. She thinks she's broadcasting, probably is, but she can't control it at all right now. And that's about when she looks down and remembers how she got the knife in her hand. There had been a gun first, knocked out of both of their reaches. But to get the knife she'd needed him close. Too close, and that's a lot of blood for a cut that has to be shallow, it's across the ribs it can't have gone too deep, just wide, wide and bleeding too much. She's going to stop thinking about this now. And she's going to get her mind under control, and bandage herself up, and find Tony, and things will be - just fine. ]

[ It was fast, when it happened, and he's pretty sure a bomb went off below then - the bank robbers, getting into the city underground - they'd never find them in time. Tony has the boots, the lighter pieces of the torso (no shielding, just there to link other armaments together) and a gauntlet. He can fly, a little, not much, so he's walking. Scanning for her, because he doesn't know how they got lost but he's terrified and full of nerves. How could he have lost his empath in a situation like this. How could he? But he's not talking; he's not asking other people if they know where this one random girl is, he's just looking for her... feeling. Her seity. It's so hard to find anything in all this noise, augh, these people, overwhelming him, too much sound, too much, and someone else, probably Natasha, who is receptive and can be helpful but only on her own terms, and those terms? Are blunt.

But he's been pushed into an alley to calm down, it's quieter here, and it only takes a few seconds to straighten back up, ready to keep looking, so he starts, turning to find Natasha and see if she wants to help, but ---

Oh, there she is. Right there. She's been right there. The kind of smile that comes from relief, a goofy, relieved smile, hits his faces and shines to hers.

He wastes little time, scrabbling over to her. ] Hey, found you first. You okay? What's this bleeding?

[ Her eyes are closed when he comes in, trying to find some way to ground herself, pulling in what shields she has as tightly as she can under the pressure, but they fly open at the first noise and she blinks rapidly, stares at him. Well that was easy. He's right there, after all. He hasn't been there the whole time, has he? She's fairly certainly he hasn't been.

She's just been standing there staring at him for a too-long moment now. He'd asked a question. ]

I got his knife. [ She holds it up to him, like an offering or an explanation, jerks her head at the dead guy. She'd meant to not kill again. ] I stopped carrying my own a month ago. Didn't think I'd need it.

[ Her other hand stays firmly pressed to her stomach, shirt pushed up to hopefully stop the blood flow. That would be good. Does she have a concussion? She probably has a concussion. She breathes out, winces against the continued onslaught of emotions from without and tries harder to close things off. ] You did find me first. You're good at finding me.

[ 'What's this bleeding', he says, and then puts another second or half of thought into it and realizes that she's what's bleeding. Instant ratchet in his senses, and now he's aware of anyone within a seventy-five yard radius, and that the blood is bright, bright red and smells of shock.

Tony watches her explanation, slowly appearing calmer, slowly adopting Iron Man mentality - which works, because he's wearing about half the skeleton of an Iron Man suit: effectively capable of flight, and enhanced strength. ]

Not like you to plan and hope for the worst. [ With a small grin, because. Hey. Situation. ] We've gotta stop that bleeding, okay? No hospitals?

[ There is a fair amount of shock mixed in, both in the way she keeps thinking of inconsequential things to say and sometimes saying them, in the fact that she's still having to piece together what led to her being here. The knife drops after a moment. She doesn't need it anymore. She did her job (no, this wasn't like the old days, there wasn't anything about a job about it).

Thinking straight is kind of hard. He's got part of the suit on, when did that happen? ] Looks skeletal. [ Mumbled a little bit, frowning. It's not the suit, not quite. And he's asking a question. She blinks, considers it. Bleeding. Right, yes. ] No hospitals. [ That's the one part she's really clear on, right now. The part about stopping the bleeding she just skips right over. ] Did I really kill him? I was trying to stop killing people.

[ Really, more than anything it's the cognitive dissonance that's getting her right now. Tony's here. Tony is safety and comfort and happiness. Her killing people, the way she is completely aware of the rate at which her heart is pumping blood, that belongs in another place. It belongs in the past and far away from here and him and what they have. She swallows, keeps talking because if she doesn't stop talking she doesn't have to start thinking about things. ] We should go home. I think we should go home now.

We can pick up a box of doughnuts on the way home. [ To put on weight. To counter-act the skeletal. Or something, he's not paying attention to everything he's saying any more than she is. Well, no, probably a bit more than she is. But he's honestly paying more attention to her right now.

But hey, he'll glance over to the other guy. Normally he'd actually like, really check, but he doesn't want to get any further from her than he has to. So he'll turn and look. The guy looks dead, but. It's doubtful that she was like this before he got here, since she doesn't really seem in much a state to... Kill someone, so he's assuming she was, at the time, totally rational and stuff, and therefore the guy must have deserved it.

Not that that's going to be that helpful to say right now. So it's a short glance, and then attention back to her. ] Right now I'm more intent on making sure he doesn't kill you, okay, come on. We're just gonna walk a little bit, c'mon, this way. [ Angling between her and the guy, just a little, just to the end of the alley, right, not hard. Look he'll even be right next to you, so you don't fall or anything. ]

That is not a solution. [ She's pretty sure it's not a solution. She's not even sure what problem it's supposed to be solving, but she's pretty sure that's just because she wasn't paying very good attention.

She frowns a little bit at that non answer, gaze sharpening. It's an effective yes, as is the way he sets himself between them. She didn't want that answer, but she didn't want him to lie to her either. Both options suck. She almost says 'he can't hurt me now,' but that's really not true at all, is it. And that's enough of shock, she needs to pull herself together and stop freaking out over what she can't change. Falling apart isn't acceptable. She would never have done this before. She's - ] Gotten soft.

[ It's a faint murmur, not so much meant to be heard as for herself as she grits her teeth and sets one foot in front of the other. She's gotten through worse. This isn't so bad. She thinks something's wrong with the ribs on her left side, but that can be put off till later so long as she can still breathe. And she can breathe. It hurts, but it's been worse before. She can even categorize what hurts - head, hand (hand? no, fingers - yes, he'd tried to get her to release her grip on the knife), ribs - the cut should burn but she almost can't feel it. That means she can deal with it. ] He's not going to kill me, that would be - anticlimactic. Extremely so. [ Just keep talking, just keep moving. ] He's just going to mildly inconvenience me for a little while. Blood's disposable to a certain point. It comes back.

It'll work. Doughnuts are very fattening, or so I'm told. I know a nice place to get some too. Bit of a fly, but I'll get them once you're all patched up.

[ wow okay don't fucking be out of it one moment and then sharp and perceptive the next that's just unnerving. Technically he didn't lie to her, he just didn't tell her anything. The guy isn't moving, but he could technically still be alive, Tony just cares a lot more about her and again, assumes the guy probably did something to merit her stabbing him. ] Better not have. C'mon, stay with me, Gibson. Do you need to put an arm over my shoulders, take some of the weight off?

[ privately, tony doesn't think death or this guy on the ground care about whether or not her death is climactic, anticlimactic, climatic, or occurs during a climax - dead is dead and not dead is better regardless of the impact on the rest of the narrative. ] Is this what talking to me is like? This must be why everyone complains about it all the time. Blood doesn't come back as quickly as you're losing it, okay. When we get out of this alley, I'm going to find something to wrap around your torso to add constant pressure and then if you can handle it, I'm just going to fly us home, okay? There's so much traffic right now, and people milling around, we'll never make it otherwise.

That sounds good, yeah.

[ though she is still not sure why they need donuts. She doesn't actually really realize she said that skeletal thing out loud and she's having trouble maintaining sharpness, sliding in and out, only able to snap into it for important things. He didn't lie to her, no. He avoided telling her the truth but that's different. Different enough. ] Lifting my arm to put it over your shoulders would pull muscles that don't need further pulling and mess with my ribs and possibly make it bleed out faster. [ beat. ] Thanks but no, it's fine. I'm fine. You never really call me Max.

[ She breathes as he talks, watches him more than where she's going because it's distracting and she'll take any distractions right now. That's the key to everything. You ignore what's there and replace it with everything else around you. You don't belong in this moment. You belong in the one just a side universe over where you're having this conversation while you're fine. ] It does come back though, eventually. Six quarts in the human body, the heart pumps that about every minute or two but to everywhere, this is just a specific portion of the body, probably not losing too much. [ Once you say it out loud, that's when things get dicey. She'll just keep contradicting him if he keeps pointing it out, because she doesn't want to hear it out loud. It is going to be too much if it doesn't stop. ] All good. Takes about a month to regenerate fully from donating blood, which is about 3/4 of a pint. But you don't have to take time off for it, you can just keep going. Of course I can handle it. I'm on top of this being okay shit.

[ ooc: shit but we never actually saw him and then it just ended in the playground and we were supposed to forget it and play but i couldn't stop being paranoid he was still out there watching us or something I WAS A SMART CHILD OKAY ]

Okay so we won't do that, no moving arms, bad idea, who even came up with that idea, that was terrible. [ so maybe he'll just have to carry you, that's cool. for the flying part at least. supposing you can handle it. also, what. blink. ] Do you want me to? [ he usually just nicknames the people he likes, technically Gibson is kind of low on the creative scale, but he's kind of preoccupied at the moment.

also hey he notices that, tries to look a little more reassuring and light-hearted. just ignore the moment, don't be in it, right, you're not here anyway, you're not even likely to be here. ] Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the circulatory system. Gotta understand how something that doesn't work that well goes together so you can keep it going. [ finally the end of the alley. ] Awesome, so you stay on top of this being okay shit and lean against this right here and I'll go harass an EMT for something.

It would have been a nice idea but it couldn't be. [ she notices a lot of things, over time, she just doesn't mention the majority of them because of that whole thing where normally she doesn't initiative conversations much herself. and now she is, because she needs things to talk about. ] I don't really care just. Noticed it a while back.

[ she would laugh but that is a terrible idea, so instead she just nods, very seriously, and leans back against the wall and closes her eyes. he's got this under control, here. seems pretty sure of what he's doing, and she's just going to keep believing that and wonder if she can forcibly slow her heart down for a little while. ] You do that. Harass away. You're an excellent harasser.

[ He tries not to stay away from her for any longer than he absolutely has to. He really doesn't want to be away from her side at all, but even he knows that's unrealistic. So he gets an EMT to go find him a suitable bunch of bandages, and while the young lady is gone, he swipes some antibacterial and pain relief - not much, he's probably got some in the tower, and he can order some through the labs anyway, but in the off-chance there isn't any immediately available. The woman comes back, he thanks her crisply, and rushes back to where he left her, relieved when she's still standing and seems to be okay. ]

Gonna put this one on you okay? Add some pressure so you can stop holding it in with your good arm and hold onto me with it instead, in a minute. You ready?

[ Still standing, still relatively okay, definitely. She wasn't going to pass out on him while he was gone, that seemed really rude. And also like a bad idea. The passing out thing in general, just. Not a great idea. This shirt is totally ruined. She lifts her hand to let him work, nods and steadfastly ignores the blood. (She is very tired of how much of her life has included blood.) ] Holding onto you is always nice. All sounds good.

[ Shorter, now, conserving breath and energy, but she manages an almost smile. ] How are you doing? With the crowds.

[ Well to be honest, while passing out would likely worry him even more, it's far more likely to allow you to receive the medical treatment you need, since while conscious he's going to rely on a mixture of personal experience and whatever you personally prefer. Which, let's be honest, isn't entirely likely to be in your own best interests.

But regardless, it doesn't take long to affix the bandage, lifting the shirt up just enough to expose the wound and even then only long enough so he can properly attach it. He knows it's going to be temporary - he can't clean anything here, not in this state - so he isn't that concerned with the specifics of it all at the moment. She can have whichever of his shirts she wants, he really doesn't care.

The first comment gets what he assumes passes as a smirk, he doesn't have that much experience with being the anchor in a situation like this, so even i don't know precisely how encouraging it actually is. So it's just an 'of course you like holding onto me, I'm a goddamn dream' and then back to real things ] It's good. I'm focused. All fine. [ Which sounds like bullshit but actually right now he really does have something to focus on, so he's pushing all the rest of it away and able to concentrate. As soon as they're back home and he's been triply reassured that she's okay - that's when he'll have problems, if he has the pure energy to do so after all of this. ] Is that okay? Is it too tight - can you breathe?

[ No let's not be honest, being honest means admitting that sometimes she can be entirely too cavalier about her own health and safety and that is no fun.

It's enough of a reassurance. A smile at all is pretty nice to get, if only because for the moment it helps feed into that nice idea of this being okay, now or soon. Everything going fine. Means that at the least he's retaining his sense of humor, and she greatly prefers that. ]

Okay. Good. Better be. [ Because she can't check right now. If she could that's what she would have done instead of asking, but right now she has to use her words and that's kind of frustrating, she'd like the noise of this crowd to be gone from inside her head. She'd also like for none of this to have happened, but you can't always get what you want, can you. She nods, forces herself to keep talking. It's harder now that she'd stopped, getting back on the distracting yourself talking groove. ] I can breathe fine. Ready to go. Ready to blow this popsicle stand.

[ looks like they both suffer in that respect when honesty is involved.

Although her question makes him consider that. He'd been so focused, so concerned about the physical, that he hadn't realized her own ability to deal with the panicked crowds was likely diminished. She's always so capable (and that's another reason he doesn't like all of this). He pushes his own shields around her a little more securely - they're built out of focus and standard sentinel stubbornness, so hopefully they'll help through whatever's happening until she can take over herself. Asking her directly in return seems a little too much right now, so he'll just keep working, tugging the shirt back down when she says she's fine, glancing at her for a moment to work out how best to do this flying thing, because with no hospitals and the streets like this, there isn't much of an option. ] They're pretty collectively losing their shit; I'll be glad to get some distance anyway. [ probably too oblique, but whatever. ] Since you can't lift your arms, I'm just going to carry you, and you're not allowed to get mad at me, even later.

[ seriously, they really do.

She blinks for a moment at the shields, a tiny bit of the tension bleeding out of her body. (Poor choice of words, perhaps.) That's helpful. The panic had become background noise to her own worry and to Tony's concern that she can't help feeling, but a background noise constantly threatening to become overwhelming, and now it was easier. That was really nice. ] Distance is always good. People. [ That's as directly as she'll address it for the moment. But at that she does find the spirit to glare at him a little, because okay, being carried, not her favorite thing. But it's Tony, and he's helping, and he's worried and upset and handling it all really well and this is the way to get home, so that all overrules any dislike she has really quickly. ] Okay. It gets us home, I'm not going to be mad. Not even later.

[ Oh good, he can see that tension just slightly drifting off, and it helps him in turn also calm a bit. Visible aid, he measures his worth in the visible if not the entirely tangible, and that's the sort of thing that convinces him that this entire relationship isn't just one-sided.

He agreement comes begrudgingly, and he expected no different, but it's still agreement and he still has to get her back home, so he bends down enough to pick her up under the arms and knees, making sure one of the arms is cradled properly, and if she can at all, that the other is looped around his neck, before he takes off. He doesn't fly as fast as he might have - without a helmet he's not only flying based solely on what he can see and JARVIS feeds him through the earpiece, but it's just harder to breathe if you go too quickly. That to the fact that holding her eliminates the use of his stabilizers, and it's actually a fairly tame fly back home. ]

[ Some day she's going to have to find a way to convince him thoroughly, once and for all, that there is nothing one sided about this relationship. If she knew he thought that, even sometimes, she'd be horrified.

She does loop her other arm around his neck, ignores the way it pulls at ribs because whatever, she's holding on to him and nothing's going to make her let go. Tame or not, she keeps her eyes closed and works on keeping her breathing even, turns her face fully into him to hide any visible pain on her face from him. Home. For a concept she's only recently come to give any meaning again, and one that never had all that much even before everything bad, it's one that means a great deal to her now. ]

[ Well then it's a good thing he's absolutely never going to bring it up ever.

I stopped here and got distracted reading two of our old threads and now I don't remember what I was going to say.

He makes the trip as quickly as he can manage, a route with few turns and avoiding odd wind drafts that might make things more difficult or complicated. It still takes him much longer than he would have liked, owing to the speed at which he has to fly for them both, but it's not that long later that he's coming to as gentle a landing as he can manage, immediately walking inside and issuing orders to JARVIS. After all the shit with the kidnapping, he's gone ahead and put a bit more medical equipment in the house, so he takes her to the bed in that room instead, carefully setting her down on it and making sure she's not going to fall off. ]

Hey, still here? I forgot to mention I had painkillers - didn't want you passing out on the fly over, or getting all drugged and letting go. [ Sometime since he's put her down, he's started the light suit disengaging, so at this point it's gone again, which is good, because he wants to just sort of, brush her hair out of her face and feel her pulse when he holds her hand for a second. ] Not allowed to hit me for that either. I do need to take your shirt off though. I can give you a pick-up line while I do it to take the edge off.

[ She gets in your head a lot dude someday she's probably going to stumble across that, by accident if nothing else, and maybe yes maybe you should mention it to her because if she ever does find out by accident she's going to be upset. Not at you, really, just at. Everything.

I have that problem a lot.

She says hello to JARVIS as they come in, lifts the hand around Tony's neck just a little bit to wave to - okay, yes, she's waving at a disembodied voice essentially, but it's the thought that counts. She's fairly certain that's it at least. Besides, JARVIS is a nice guy. He welcomed them home, she should say hi in - which is about when she thinks she needs to stop rambling about things that don't matter. ]

Still here -- [ she narrows her eyes but makes what can be read as a shrug despite moving as little of herself as possible to do it. ] I'm not going to hit you, it's just pain. But I would appreciate those. About now. [ Because she may be used to it, but she's fallen out of the habit and if there's no need to live with it then she wants the option where she doesn't have to. That one's a lot better. She wants to hold onto his hand, turns her head just a little bit into the brush of his hand on her face. Tactile reassurance of his presence is the easiest to believe. ] But I won't get follow through. Disappointing. [ But she tugs her shirt up with one hand a little. Not like it's anything he hasn't seen. ]

[ That sounds like our next thread right there. Tell me I'm wrong.

He does smile a little bit, a quirk of one side of his mouth, because he likes it when people treat JARVIS like he's a person. It makes him feel good. Basically the same thing a normal person would get if they saw their baby interacting positively with the world around it, but it's long since been established that Tony Stark has a somewhat skewed sense of what is strictly alive and what isn't.

He moves just enough to reach them where he set the painkillers down behind him on a table, twisting with one arm out to snatch them up and then lean over her to properly administer them, because they are like all truly good painkillers, the needley kind. He doesn't ask her if she's ready, or where she prefers, just a slight jab and then hopefully the cooling sensation of detachment from pain will take over anything else. He does keep talking though. ] I promise that after you can move your arms without bleeding I will run you into the wall and sex you senseless, how's that? Delayed gratification is about the best I can offer at the moment. [ Moving to pull it up just a bit more - it needs to stay up of it's own accord, so he has to fold it back a fair deal. And then start to try and gently clean the wound to get a proper look. For someone who hammers and welds and has callouses on his hands, he can have a surprisingly gentle touch, which he is utilizing right now, cleaning. ]

[ I can't tell you you're wrong because I actually think you're right.

She doesn't like painkillers, in general. They cloud her brain too much, she's always reacted strongly to them and she hates not having control over what she says or does. But yeah, she's more than happy to take them right now. Tony's got her. She's safe, she doesn't have to be in control right now. She can just stay still and let the drugs run into her system, taking things aside. It's a great feeling, especially when it comes without attendant anxiety over reaction times slowing and safety. ]

That a promise? [ Light, better able to be amused now that she's slowly feeling like the pain genuinely is just in another moment. Somewhere else. His hands are gentle and she can still feel his concern, realizes belatedly that her shields aren't really working that well. ] This is just payback for that time you broke your ribs and I said no sex. Isn't it.

[ He had a feeling she mightn't, yes. But right now, painkillers are a very very good thing. He's felt the shields for a little while now, but his own are working relatively well - as long as she's not getting too much from him, and she seems to be okay, he can handle it until the immediate crisis is over.

Tony moves a light so he can see a little better once she seems to mellow out a little with the drug. He's trying to clean it without actually having to be too invasive about it - he can tell that fixing it entirely is likely going to require some amount of stitching - unless. When he replies, he's got that slightly distracted tone that typically accompanies his having more of his attention on what he's working on. ] Yes it is. I've just been waiting for a chance to pay you back for that one. How well is that local anesthetic working? Have you noticed any other injuries? [ He's quickly glanced her over, putting senses to work, but just noticed scratches and the swelling that accompanies normal bruising. He'd need a more in depth look or some sort of scanner - or to watch her moving around - to notice anything beyond that. ]

[ No wonder he didn't ask her if she had a preference for where. Sometimes she really thinks he understands her too well. He's too intuitive about her, but then so is she about him. Turn and turn about. She guesses that's fair, but that doesn't mean she always appreciates it.

She's okay with that tone, though, because what he's working on is, well, fixing her. Which is something she'd highly prefer wasn't necessary but if it is she's just glad he's okay enough with fixing her himself that no hospitals are necessary. She hates hospitals. ] Ribs are bruised on the left. Head hurts. Fingers on my right hand went against a railing, might just be bruised or it might be something more. He was - kind of an asshole. [ And she wanted to stay alive, and even if all he wanted was a hostage she had instincts that screamed worse at her. So now he's dead, and she's listing out injuries clinically because she knows the value of a good situational awareness. ] Nothing too bad. [ She's alive, isn't she? ]

/leans on

ahhhhhhhh it's so perfect ;;

you are perfect ;;

no u

it is a title that can be shared /curls up with

well okay

see this is why kindergarten is important you learn how to share

my two week kindergarten experience just taught me to fear the gingerbread man

... why to fear the gingerbread man and i don't know how that happened

idk we just had this like, scavenger hunt for him one day and he was running around everywhere doing

personally i happen to think paranoia is a really healthy thing to have to an extent

as a 4yo? when i was 7 i thought my life was like The Truman Show. for /years/.

slkdhf lmfao

i'm serious!!! no really can you imagine what thinking everything you do is on camera between 7-14

alksf not really i voiceovered to fake audiences sometimes but i don't think i ever /believed/ in it

p a r a n o i a

awww baby /wraps up

;;

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