Prompt# 350 – Sarcasm - Room for Improvement/ extra - Tekia – Exalted/the Avengers

[tekia.livejournal.com]

Title: Room for Improvement (extra)
Fandom: the Avengers/ Exalted
Prompt: sarcasm
Warnings: none
Rating: PG
Summary: After coming home Exalted, Tony has plans and ideas all but pouring out of his ears. Back in Creation, there was magic everywhere, and a little hard work wasn’t going to stop him from finding those wells of magic in his own world.


The only major issue he had, of course, was working on the engines underwater.
First, while the Iron Man suit was built to endure quite well underwater, it wasn’t ideal for long exposure. And the work that he was probably going to have to do wasn’t going to be accomplished easily while encased in a suit of armor, no matter how well it obeyed his magic and commands. He needed to feel the tools in his hands, the parts he was working on, the Essence flowing between the stonework and his flesh.
Second, Tony wasn’t too fond of water at all. Being submerged in water, even less so. When they had taken that dump into the river, back before, Tony had nearly had a panic attack. That was with the surface only a few feet away. When he had first gone to the manse, when The Hour at Hand had told him about it, it had felt like his body had been taken over by something else, directing him to the temple and toward his future. That something he now called Essence and, if he had to admit it under duress, fate.
The whole point was, he hadn’t had room for his fear of water to make an impact on his thoughts at the time. He had been wholly fixated on stopping The Hour at Hand, and proving to everybody once and for all that he was capable. That he could make it on his own. Without making someone else come and clean up his mess.
Which had backfired grandly in his face, now that he thought about it.
True, The Hour at Hand had been defeated and destroyed, and Tony himself was back and stronger than ever, but it was all thanks to Iron Dust and White Song.
The two of them had fetched him out of the Wyld and directed him home again. He had been as useless as a newborn babe. But it didn’t feel the same, them coming to his aid, as it had when he had been at rock bottom and it had been Rhodey pulling him to his feet.
He stared at the satellite mates of the ocean where he knew his manse was hidden under the blue depths, and tried to find why those two situations were different.
Had it been because he hadn’t been so sure that he wasn’t worth it? He rubbed a hand over his mouth and leaned back in the chair as that thought seemed to open something inside him.
Ever since he had been a child, he had always thought that he had never been worth anything. He hadn’t been good enough. No matter how hard he tried, no matter what he did, he had never been good enough.
All the talent in the world hadn’t made him good enough to earn his father’s love and attention. And then, suddenly, it hadn’t mattered to him.
It had been as if the moment he had stepped into that distant past, he had become a changed man. Nothing had mattered to him except getting back home to his team and his world. It hadn’t mattered that he knew, deep down, that he was doomed to lose everything he cared about, nor had it mattered that he shoved the good things in life away in fear that they would leave him willingly when they had the opportunity.
And look what had happened.
Two wonderful heroes came to him and adopted him into their circle. Two wood nymphs had taken to him as if he hadn’t been the driving force of technological advancement, displaying nature in the process. And above it all, something so pure and wonderful as his exaltation had come to him, settled into his soul as if he had been worthy.
And he had accepted it just as easily.
He had changed, in that time away from time.
And he wasn’t sorry for it.
Pepper and he were working on their relationship. He was spending more time bonding with the Avengers. And he had his exalted circle to support him in ways that he hadn’t known he had needed.
So the question remained. Why wasn’t he happy?
Was it really because he didn’t have a manse? Or was it something else.
He jerked out of the chair and tapped a rapid tattoo on the casing of the arc reactor as he began to pace the room, thoughts now a million miles away from pulling the manse up from the depths of the ocean.
Iron Dust had mentioned time and again that his Essence had been from a life before this one. That his soul was the reincarnation of a man that had died long ago. Tony mostly ignored that thought. Dwelling on how his soul had once belonged to another was nothing more than frightening, and he tried very hard to forget it.
Not that he could. Sarcasm aside, he really was the genius he loudly proclaimed to the world that he was, and his edict memory wasn’t always a blessing.
So, let’s think about what having another person’s soul inside him really meant.
He plopped down on the leather sofa and kicked up his feet. The emotions that he couldn’t place might come from that other person’s memories. Was he not happy in his past life?
Or, rather, who had he been in his past life?
Exalted, that was a given. White Song had mentioned at some point that Solar exalts had been great kings, blessed as they had been by the sun god. They had been rich and powerful, and there was nobody that knew wealth and power did not bring happiness the way Tony did.
Clearly he had been a masterful inventor in his past life too, to build a floating island to house his manse.
Inventing made Tony happy, and he couldn’t see, if the man before him was anything like him, how that could be the cause of his unhappiness.
Unless he had built something he regretted. The same way Tony had.
Rubbing his hands over his eyes, Tony remembered that, back there, there had been a war. A great war that decided the fate of the world. Iron Dust barely spoke of it, and White Song never said a word about it, but Tony was sure his exaltation had been in that war.
His dreams had told him of the grand life he had lived, and maybe they could tell him more. Yinsen had said that all the memories of his past were inside him now. If he could unlock them, maybe he could find the key to doing away with this constant feeling of discontent.
He felt that he deserved to finally be happy, for once in his life.