Prompt#314- Subterfuge - Room for Improvement 3.0- Tekia – The Avengers/Exalted

[tekia.livejournal.com]

Title: Room for Improvement 3.0
Fandom: Avengers/Exalted
Prompt: Subterfuge
Warnings: none
Rating: PG-13
Summary: After falling into a trap, the first order of business it to find out where you are. But, if where you are makes no sense, then what are you supposed to do? Traveling to the future is easy, just fall asleep, right? Waking up to a whole different world is harder. Luckily, Tony Stark can adapt to any environment.


The days started to bleed together as Tony fought against the primitive tools in Wisp of Shadow’s workshop. To fix the chest plate fully, he need to rewire much of it. Even worse, was trying to figure a way to make the gauntlets work with the suit.
They had nothing on the Iron Man’s original gauntlets. There were no repulsors, and the fingers, while well made, were nothing like the delicate metal work of his own. The figured with a little patience, he could make them work. He still wouldn’t be able to fly as well as before without the balancing effects of the hand repulsors, but any gauntlets were better than none at all.
He was two weeks into working on the gauntlets when he finally figured it all out. It was so simple, that he cursed himself for not getting it sooner. The gauntlets in his hands seemed to talk to him, telling him their secrets and he understood it all so well. Like a door had been opened to him and now this whole new world of metal work was ready to flow from his hands. Suddenly eager, he pulled the armor on, nearly dancing in place as he struggled with what a machine used to do for him. JARIVS greeted him, but Tony waved him off.
“This metal takes well to currents, so let’s treat it like it’s a feed instead of a lump of metal. Let’s see how magical this material really is.” He attached the gauntlets to the armor and flexed his hands inside it. “Let’s see it react like it has always been a part of the armor.”
“Sir,” JARVIS said, displaying a chart on the HUD of the status of the gauntlets. “It appears that the metal reacts well with the armor. The feeds you implanted into the metal have, for lack of a better phrase, brought it to life.”
And suddenly the metal gauntlets that were so heavy before were like a second skin, light and fitted. He raised them to eye level and commanded the armor to flex the fingers without his own hands doing the work.
They folded into fists neatly and Tony gave a startled laugh. “Magical? This metal conducts electricity. It’s science.”
“Is it?”
Tony jumped and turned toward the door where Iron Dust was leaning against the door jam, arms folded over his chest, just as he always appeared when he came to the forge to fetch Tony. There was something off.
He blinked and realized that the room was much brighter than it had ever been, but dismissed the notion as unimportant in light of his realizations. His eyes had finally adjusted to the perpetual gloom of the house. He pulled the faceplate up and grinned at Iron Dust. “I have my armor back. It’s not as good as it was, but it will do for now. Without my shop and my materials, these gauntlets will have to do.”
He held them up for Iron Dust to inspect, but he didn’t look at them. Instead, his mud yellow eyes were steady on Tony’s face, his own face drawn tight and serious. Tony dropped his hands to his sides.
“What?”
Then Iron Dust laughed, but it didn’t have much humor in it. He shook his head and pushed away from the door, walking slowly into the shop. “I should have known, you know? You told me twice over that you were a genius.”
“Well, I am.”
“But I was so busy focusing on my quest that I didn’t pay attention. I didn’t listen.”
Tony grinned. “Well, I’m not offended. I mean, after this, you do understand my greatness, right? That’s what matters.”
Iron Dust shook his head and braced his hands on the table that stood between them, his eyes lowered. Tony felt something ugly craw up his stomach and into his throat. He swallowed hard.
“What happened?”
Iron Dust’s eyes shot to his and he gave another humorless bark of a laugh. “You don’t even know. Luna demanded that you stay out of any fights so that you wouldn’t be pressed, so you wouldn’t be put in the position to Exalt. I should have seen it then. She knew you had it in you to be a hero, but she didn’t know you, just like I didn’t listen to you.”
“You’ve lost me. I thought to Exalt you had to fight for it.”
“No,” he said, his voice soft. “You only have to need it. You have to reach your limit and surpass it.” His eyes widened. “And you told us, didn’t you? You lived when you should have died. You reached your limit once and surpassed it then.” He reached out and touched two fingers to the red of the armor. “Exaltation wasn’t available to you then, but here, here you’ve claimed your place in the stars.”
“How?” His voice sounded odd to him, his throat dry.
Iron Dust’s fingers trailed down the arm of the armor, over the gauntlets before dropping away. “The armor is your genius. You put so much into it.” He straightened and looked Tony in the eye. “Many Exalts catch their second breath in the midst of battle, when they are finished, but still go on. It’s is always in a burst of sudden strength and power, but for some it is in genius.” He touched a hand to his own chest, hesitated, and then went on: “For us, it is in the quiet understanding of those things that have eluded us for so long.”
Tony touched one gauntlet to the other in silent confession, and Iron Dust nodded. “I Exalted because I think?”
Iron Dust smiled. “You Exalted because you are strong. Here,” he tapped a finger to Tony’s head. “Not all wars are won with brute strength. It also takes great minds to create the weapons and tools used to win.”
But Tony was shaking his head. “I won’t build weapons. I won’t join your war. I can’t,” he pleaded, not caring that he was lowering himself so.
Iron Dust nodded. “I know. And Luna’s command still stands. You are far too dangerous here, and you must return to your world.”
Suddenly bereft of fight, Tony sank onto a bench. “I don’t feel different. Just,” his eyes flicked around the room and he felt the longing to build, to take all that jade and make something of it that could change this world. His eyes landed on the clock and he suddenly felt anger that he hadn’t invented the clock, merely copied something that humans had known how to make for hundreds of years. “Eager.”
Iron Dust smiled. “Of course. You’re wanting to get out there and make your mark on the world. You want to own the world.”
Tony shook his head, but had to stop and admit that maybe that was what he wanted. “I nearly do, back home. My name is everywhere and my inventions are highly sought after. What will this Exaltation do to me?”
Iron Dust sat beside him, their shoulders brushing. “Who knows. You are now Blessed. Your father’s light is cast upon you.”
“My father.” Tony snorted. “I could never get him to look at me with pride.”
“Not your sire, but the Unconquered Sun, the father of Solar Exalts.”
There was a cold lump sitting in his stomach. He’d learned a bit about Lunars, and even some about Iron Dust’s kind, but not much about Solars. “I thought I was Blessed by Luna?”
He shook his head. “She has her eye on you, watching over you. You are guided by her, but you are Blessed by her brother.” He reached out and covered Tony’s armored hand with his own. “Unlikely as it is, you are doubly blessed. You have been Blessed by the Unconquered Sun, and touched by Luna.” His eyes dropped briefly to the arc reactor. Tony covered it.
“I built this. I made this from what my father, my biological father, created. I built it and Luna had nothing to do with it.”
Iron Dust nodded. “Alright. But you still have a moon in your chest.” He patted Tony’s hand once more and stood. Before he could get any farther away, Tony caught his hand.
“How’d you know I Exalted?”
For a moment, Iron Dust just stared at him. He then looked around the room. Tony followed his gaze, seeing nothing different in the room, feeling not that very different himself. He turned back to Iron Dust and waited. Finally, he touched his free hand to Tony’s brow.
“You have been marked. We are all marked by our Essence, and yours is there.”
Tony touched his brow, knocking Iron Dust’s hand away. There was nothing there, but suddenly there was a softening of the light on Iron Dust’s face.
That’s what was different! The room was much brighter than it had ever been. He stood and fumbled through the mess on his bench, knowing there had been a bit of mirror somewhere in the jumble of metal.
He found the mirror and nearly blinded himself with direct sunlight when he held it up to his face. He tilted it off center and finally spotted the mark on his brow. It was circle, with half filled in and the bottom half an empty ring. It gave off a radiance so bright that he wondered how they could still see at all.
He slammed the mirror face down on the table, clipping it on a bit of metal, snapping a fine shard off. “What is that? It’s like the one Hour at Hand had on his head.”
“His was green, was it not?”
Tony nodded, his mouth dry. “Am I like him, then?” Another thought. “Will I go insane like him too?”
Iron Dust rushed to sooth his fears, one hand raised as if he were going to reach out and hold Tony, but White Song’s voice cut through.
“Not unless you’re already insane. The Unconquered Sun only Blesses those that are healthy and in peak condition.”
Tony gave a short bark of a laugh. “You two are, like, twelve. I’m closer to fifty than forty. How is that in peak condition?”
Iron Dust gave her a disgruntled look before turning back to Tony. “As I said, you were chosen for you mind.” This time, he did touch Tony, placing his palm over the arc reactor. Tony tensed, ready to defend himself against the theft of the one thing that keeps him alive. His hand shot out and grasped Iron Dust’s forearm, but Iron Dust made no move to fight him. “It is your intelligence and willingness to learn that makes your star resplendent and your fate auspicious. It is your soul that gave you the chance to become Exalted, and your body will follow.”
Iron Dust held his gaze, steady and soothing. Tony felt the anxiety and panic huddled inside him begin to unfurl and calm. “What does that mean?”
White Song was suddenly at his side, pressing up against his shoulder and smiling up at him with a mouthful of teeth. “It means you get to start training. It means I get to train you.”
“Why do I get the feeling that that’s not as fun as it sounds?”
She chuckled and let him loose. He dropped Iron Dust’s hand from his arc reactor and stepped away. “What happens next?” He glanced between them, wanting direction. Wanting to just go home and pretend this was all just a dream.
“Dinner,” White Song said. “It’s getting cold.” She walked out of the room, and Iron Dust nodded.
“That’s it?” Tony raised his brows. “I expected something more from Exaltation.”
Iron Dust laughed softly. “Sometimes it is more, ah, explosive. Many Solars Exalt while in battle, nearly all Lunars do.”
“Your kind?”
“Sidereals involve more subterfuge. We are a secret race, from the moment we are born, to our Exaltation, to our deaths.”
“How did you Exalt?”
Iron Dust paused next to the door on his way out, his fingers picking at the wood grain. “I was given a choice. I was young and headstrong.” He smiled again, and suddenly Tony missed the bright yellow of his eyes, and hoped for even a glimmer of them inside the dull brown he hid them behind. “We’re different than Solars and Lunars. We don’t suddenly Exalt, but we are born Exalted. It takes a special moment to awaken the understanding of Essence inside us. In that moment, I understood the path I had to take and where it was going to lead us all. It was in that moment that the Maiden of Journeys awoken the Essence inside me and I became Blessed.”
Tony stepped up next to him, resting a hand on his shoulder. “You were just a child, weren’t you?”
“Fifteen.”
“What did you have to choose?”
His gaze went distant as he turned his thoughts inward. “Between life and death, isn’t it always? I had to choose if I was going to let the world die on my watch or not.”
“That’s an awfully big choice for someone so young.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I am Sidereal. It is my duty to make these choices.”
“What is my duty, as a Solar?” He reached up and rubbed at the phantom pain of the burning sunburst on his brow. He couldn’t feel a thing, pain or otherwise, but he knew it was there, and thus rubbed at it like it were a wound.
Iron Dust’s gaze came back into focus and he smiled, a real smile that held none of the sadness from his words. “Ideally? To save Creation from those that would see her destroyed. Truthfully? Nothing. Merely live and survive long enough for us to get you back to where you come from.”
Tony nodded. “Yes, home. I’d like that.” Iron Dust nodded and stepped out of the room, disappearing into the dark garden that separated the shop from the house. Tony hesitated a moment, hand still over his brow. What really was this going to mean for him?
What was this going to mean for Iron Man?
As soon as the thought entered his mind, ideas and new diagrams of the armor began to pop into his head. He had so much he could change about the armor, things that he had never thought possible, but if he were to build it, it would become fact. He almost turned to go back to the bench and resume his efforts.
The armor hissed as he moved, the hydrologic a subtle noise that reminded him that he didn’t belong in this world. With a sigh of disappointment, he began removing the armor, placing it carefully on one of the tables he had emptied just for the armor, and dusted his tunic off before following after Iron Dust and White Song.
That night, cocooned between the two bodies of his companions, he dreamed of his father. Howard was, as he last remembered him, taller than him, always, scowling down at Tony as he laid sprawled out over his mother’s chaise lounge, still reeling from one too many drinks the night before. He remembered this night well, the shouting and the scowl on Howard’s face as he laid out in no uncertain terms that Tony was, always had been, and probably always will be a disappointment to him.
Dream Howard wasn’t speaking a language Tony could understand, his words clipped and harsh as he spat them over Tony. He blinked up at him, narrowing his eyes against the glare of bright sunlight pouring in from the wide bay windows behind Howard. The hangover he knew he should have been suffering from was absent as he sat up and tried to focus in on Howard’s face.
Howard suddenly stopped shouting at him, his face smoothing into something calm and empty. Tony stood, reached out, and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Howard was gone; the room in the old mansion was gone, and Tony was alone in sunlight.
He spun on his heel to look around him. The dream changed and he was in a grand hall, gilded pillars soaring high toward a ceiling that seemed so far away it was the sky. There were people everywhere, dancing, talking, and drinking from fine flutes of liquid gold. A hand settled on his elbow and he nearly jumped out of his skin.
There was a petite dark haired woman at his side, her eyes as green as the glass in the windows casting rainbows over the floor. While Tony could hear the faint murmur from the rest of the crowd, when people spoke directly to him, he heard nothing. She mouthing something to him, and then pointed to a man approaching.
The man was tall, of a height with Steve, if Tony wasn’t mistaken, with black hair and grey eyes and clothes as somber as a priest’s. He bowed curtly toward Tony, and then held out a hand. Tony shook his hand, and suddenly, Tony knew this man. Had known him forever it seemed.
He couldn’t place him, nor could he name him, but Tony knew him. The familiar stranger leaned close to whisper in his ear. He was prepared for his dream self to react accordingly, as he had in the last few moments moved without any say from Tony at all, but the man’s voice, low, deep, poured into his ears.
“Don’t waste it.”
Cold shock flooded him, and he woke with a start. White Song murmured in her sleep, turning away from him, putting several inches between them so that the light from his arc reactor glowed brightly. He carefully disentangled his arms from her hair and body and sat up.
Those had been Yensin’s last words to him, and the voice in the dream, now that he was awake, was blending into Yensin’s voice. His heart pounded in his ears and he rubbed his hands over his face.
“Lost Path?”
A moment passed before Tony remembered that that was his new name in this world, and he turned to see Iron Dust blinking up at him. He had one hand pressed up to bush the hair away from his brow and his eyes searched Tony’s face worriedly.
“A dream, nothing more.”
Iron Dust sat up, sliding his legs off the side of the bed. “It is never nothing more than a dream. Tell me?”
Tony shook his head, but then he paused. “I dreamed of my father, and then of people I didn’t know speaking words that haunt me.”
Iron Dust rubbed a hand over his face, his eyes closed as he thought. “Have you dreamed of your father before?”
“Very often. Not for a while, but that dream was the same as always. I was a disappointment to him. I grew up feeling worthless and unwanted.” He made a scoffing noise. “I sound like a child. I’ve always known that I was nothing to him, why does it still bother me twenty years after his death?” He climbed out of the bed and went to the basin on a side table. He splashed the cool water over his face, then propped his fists on the table, his shoulders high and his head low. The light from the arc reactor reflected off the white porcelain.
He heard Iron Dust move on the bed, but he didn’t stand. After a moment of silence, he finally said, “I didn’t know my father. He died on a fishing trip before I could walk. His brother helped raise me, after, but I was never on par with his own children. Never as poised as his oldest, never as strong as his youngest. My mother did her best, but a boy needs a father, you know?”
The tension went out of his shoulders, and Tony turned toward him. Iron Dust caught his eye and then smiled slightly. “I hated him, growing up. I dreamed of the day that I would leave his house and strike out on my own.”
“My father didn’t know I existed half the time.” Tony sat back on the bed, his hip against Iron Dust’s knee. He looked over at White Song, still sleeping heavily. “When he did remember me, he only had criticisms and harsh words for me. I was his only son, but I was never good enough. And I was brilliant. I was, still am, one of the smartest people in the world.” He scratched at the scars around the arc reactor. “My talent was above his, back then. And I think he hated me for that.”
Iron Dust hummed softly, and they settled into a calming silence. Then Tony turned fully toward him, one knee propped on the bed. “What are the gods like? You called the Unconquered Sun my father, so what does that mean?”
“The gods are the ones that created our Exaltations. They are our creators, and our gods. Thus, they are our mothers and father.”
“Luna is what, a mother or a father?” He glanced at White Song. “She calls him a father, but you call her a mother.”
“Luna is both. Luna is as changing as the moon, and can be whichever she wants.”
Tony grinned. “She sounds fun. What’s the Unconquered Sun like?”
“Like an absent parent.” He yawned and knuckled his eye. “The gods are too busy playing their Games of Divinity to pay attention to the pieces on the board. Luna is the only one that really pays attention to the mortal world.” His lips twitched in an almost smile. “Be grateful for it.”
“If they paid attention?”
“All of our lives would be much more difficult.” He slid until his head was laying on the pillow. “Try to sleep. I want to start teaching you some things before the sun rises. You’ll have to be extremely careful when using your Essence here, the Hunt arrived three days ago.”
Tony felt his heart sputter in his chest. His eyes went wide and he gaped at Iron Dust. “Why didn’t you say something before?”
“Did it matter before? White Song knew, I knew, and you were human. They wouldn’t have sought you out and we are far too careful to be caught.”
Tony climbed over Iron Dust’s legs and stretched out beside him. In his world, sleeping like this was anathema to him. The only people that shared his bed were lovers that he kicked out the next morning. He never even slept, merely waited until they were out and escaped into his workshop.
As he settled back down into the still warm spot, White Song pressed her body close to his, and Iron Dust’s heat was a comfort.
He liked this, just sleeping and being a part of something.

Comments

[nouseforasammie.livejournal.com]

He was two weeks into working on the gauntlets when he finally figured it all out. It was so simple, that he cursed himself for not getting it sooner. The gauntlets in his hands seemed to talk to him, telling him their secrets and he understood it all so well. Like a door had been opened to him and now this whole new world of metal work was ready to flow from his hands.

This got me hooked on reading the rest....that and I love Tony Sparks lol Great job, thanks for sharing!

[tekia.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you so much for reading and commenting! You've made my night! Thank you!

[nouseforasammie.livejournal.com]

lol Glad you had a better night! haha