Event- Siren

[apocalypsehowmods]

↬ Main Navigation

Siren

➥ The Public Eye

(cw: potential body dysmorphia, loss of control, human-caused pollution, animals in distress/animal cruelty/injury to animals (specifically seabirds for one small portion of this prompt), body horror, uncanny valley)

Like most towns of an appreciable size in America, Gloucester, MA, is graced with something of an overabundance of video cameras. Perhaps even more-so than most small towns given the presence of ADI and the supernatural phenomenon that regularly plague the place. The mechanical eyes gaze silently out at the world, sentinels or sneaks, gathering information. And there is something very, very wrong with them.

It's not every camera. It's not even consistent among cameras, but every so often, perhaps related to whatever hacker has already been causing problems, something shifts. Those walking nearby (or even far from) a video camera will find their consciousness momentarily ripped from their bodies and transported into the camera's viewer. There, they'll be granted the vision of the camera, whether that's grainy black and white, full color, or maybe even night-vision. For those lucky enough to be transported to a camera near their own bodies, they will be able to see themselves twitching, moving irregularly, as if something is trying to gain control.

There seems to be no way to control the camera they're in. It is stationary or perhaps it moves in a set turning motion. Those trapped within have no control for the minute or so they seem to be transported. If they can take a moment to calm themselves and take advantage of this new perspective, of course… there might be rather interesting things to see, including:

• A massive, scaled form moving out in the deep water off of Gloucester's shoreline. With the night-vision capabilities granted by these particular visions, those trapped might even catch sight of strange figures swimming near the impossibly large creature. They throw… something at it and the vast creature thrashes, kicking up enormous waves that rocket toward the coast.
  
  
• Piles of garbage are cast up onto the beaches by some of the rogue waves that seem to be kicking up. Some of them move and almost appear to have a humanoid form before they simply fall apart, becoming a pile of simple rubbish.
  
  
• Unidentifiable figures in dark clothes are moving around the city at night, spray painting eyes in alleyways, across buildings, anywhere they can find that cameras might be able to see. If someone were to catch a glimpse as they were just finishing up their artwork, they might notice that the spray painted eye blinks.
  
  
• A small growth of horrible, lamb-esque plant creatures seems to have cropped up in an alleyway near Things of Beauty, one of the curiosity stores in town. There aren't a lot of them and they seem to be small and young. They're also in an out-of-the way spot that might be difficult to notice for more people.
  
  
• A group of youths appears to have found a weak point in the fencing around Dogtown. As dusk descends, they can be seen traveling into the closed park. It would seem some refuse to be deterred by law enforcement and ADI.
  
  
• Head of ADI Security, Neil Grace, seems to be spending his lunch hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays entering into an unmarked building to do… something. He enters and exits completely alone.
  
  
• Non-native (recently demoted) PR person, Reyes Amador, seems to be in some remote back alley in town some evenings. They have a large fishing hook that may be familiar to anyone who saw the flayed bodies on the beach. They also have a caged seagull with them. There's clear upset on their face as they reach into the cage and manage to plant the hook into the bird before quickly shutting and locking the cage. The bird goes wild within its confines, attempting to attack Reyes as they cover their face and appear to cry to themselves.
  
  

➥ Rogue Wave

(cw: thassalophobia, large creatures, drowning, flooding, (un)natural disasters, human-caused pollution, animals in distress/injury to animals)

rogue wave (n.) a random, enormous ocean wave that sometimes travels at an angle to prevailing seas.

The beaches are closed.

To be fair, the beaches have been closed since bodies started washing up on shore and left ADI's PR department working overtime to keep the grim scene out of national news. Now, though, the problem is rapidly becoming more vast than what horrors the sea dumps ashore: the ocean itself seems to be trying to relocate inland. The first rogue wave to hit the harbor early in the morning on August 16 is devastating enough on its own, battering boats against their docks and drowning one unfortunate fisherman who was swept out with the wave when it retreated. That incident alone would have been a freak occurrence, a tragic and frightening tale but ultimately a mundane one born of the unpredictability of the natural world.

But then the next rogue wave hits, and the next after that, and the next after that. They're not regular or predictable; the waves don't hit in the same place each time or at regular times. One day might be a reprieve of calm, and the next see massive waves battering the coast one after another. Gloucester is taking a beating, and the rest of the region is suffering along with the city. Homes and businesses on waterfront property are left abandoned in the face of unpredictable, uncaring destruction, and flooding extends inland. The air in Gloucester is thick with salt and humidity, the ground increasingly soggy underfoot as one nears the sea. ADI sends out custodial crews to batten down and place sandbags at headquarters and the housing complex. Thanks to ongoing repair efforts, Bonnie's Flophouse is, for once, not flooded, though Bonnie and the Visionary are pessimistically preparing for the eventuality of having to evacuate their basement apartment once again. Neighbors around Gloucester are in similar distress; for the civic-minded there is no end of work for volunteers in water-proofing buildings or helping salvage that which has already flooded.

The why of it all will take some legwork to discover. Within a few days ADI manages to spin up a story about seismological disturbances on the ocean floor, which...actually isn't that far from the truth, as far as anyone can initially tell. The rogue waves all originate from roughly the same patch of open ocean, and the best view from shore is at the far end of Coffin Beach. Investigators are strongly cautioned to have an escape plan to reach high ground at a moment's notice, and anyone known to lack outdoor survival skills will be officially discouraged from going. Observation efforts will be hit or miss; one might strain one's eyes for hours and see nothing but a few erratic ocean swells.

Get lucky enough to see more, and your luck might quickly run out. The creature that appears offshore might be mistaken for a whale breaching in the first few seconds, before one realizes that the shape is wrong, what one mistook for the whale's body resolving into the reptilian head of a serpent whose body goes on and on and on, heralding the realization that it is so much further away than one first thought. The creature is impossibly huge, a leviathan that could swallow a cargo ship whole. Its coils rise from the surface of the ocean before crashing back down with a low, bone-rattling bellow of pain. From this distance the human-sized creatures that surround it and provide the apparent source of its distress are mere specks.

Hope you remember your exit plan. A mere flick of this serpent's tail would be enough to capsize a ship, and this is a full-body thrash of pain. The waves offshore swell as the creature submerges, a wall of dark water heading all too quickly toward the beach, carrying yet more garbage with it.

➥ Thicker Than Water

(cw: thassalophobia, large creatures, claustrophobia, blood, siren sounds in the first link, hallucinated death)

Though few, the towering forms of the signal tower creatures still stalk about the edges of the town, largely still and passive but for the blaring tones they occasionally cause. They could almost be forgotten about, a new and eerie installation to Gloucester's skyline but nothing too distressing as long as you don’t look up, right? At least until the day a new sound issues from some of the phones.

The effect is immediate. The smell of rusted metal and a gentle chirp of electronic equipment mixing with a less than comforting creek of metal on all sides. One second you’re on the city street and the next, you’re in the cramped and stale-aired interior of a submarine. Large pipes line the sides of the sub and two bare-bulbs in metal cages light the interior with a harsh glare. Oxygen and depth meters frame the single porthole window to the outside above an instrument panel that displays coordinates, a compass, and simple controls for piloting the rust-encrusted submarine.

When you look around, the back of the sub is only a few paces away, the space clearly meant for no more than one or two people. At the back is a small, blank, video display surrounded by additional pressure gauges. A large map sits beside it, the topography of it faded and nearly useless, but the lines of the coordinate grid can just be made out. Between the map and the display, is a rectangular button backlit in dull orange. When pressed, the display struggles to life with a whirring sound before finally displaying an image of the empty ocean ahead in black and white.

Luckily, you’re not alone here and you and your new partner can quickly find instructions laying around; though, the edges seem warped and encrusted with a rust-red and flaky substance. It’s an easy task: move to the listed coordinates and angle, snap a picture of the anomaly, move on to the next. Simple. You certainly don’t seem to have much of a choice as any hatches appear to be welded shut and the forward window is covered by a sheet of metal as the sub lurches to life. Though, not before you perhaps notice the ocean outside isn’t a deep blue as you might expect, but an unsettling red.

Probably fine.

Eventually, you reach depth and idle, the submarine now left in your capable hands. Those more willing to explore will find the ocean around them entirely unfamiliar. While rocky outcroppings make maneuvering hazardous, there’s also the odd, sharp plantlife to consider and the occasional tube-like shapes that wave about and knock against the sub like over-eager worms. Those particularly lucky might even catch sight of something else out there. Something unfathomably huge. Whether the pair of you decide to follow instructions or not, in time, the creaking of the metal sharpens and feels as if it presses in on you, like it might just crumble. Seams warp and shift and the bottom of the sub begins to slowly fill with a thick, fresh, blood.

The oxygen meter steadily drops and as you move or don’t, something seems to knock against the outside of the metal walls, surely too thin to protect you from whatever lurks outside. Which will get to you first: whatever lives in blood or the threat of suffocation? Perhaps if you finish your task quickly, you won’t need to find out.

➥ Nereid

(cw: human-caused pollution, animals in peril, potential animal death, potential drowning)
(Additional Note: Thank you to Alexis, Katrina's player, for reviewing and contributing to this prompt.)

It's taken a few days to arrange for the boat and organize their forces, but an expedition out into deeper water is underway, spearheaded by Katrina, to investigate the flayed bodies that have been washing up on shore. Sable, ADI's primary contact at the Docks, has volunteered her small vessel for the task. It might be dangerous, but with the waves lashing Gloucester's banks and infrastructure, it's either help with this or deal with the fact she's not going to have a place to do business in town soon.

With the bodies cropping up at night, volunteers who take to the water are outfitted with night-vision goggles, harpoon spears, knives, and nets. However, the boat heads out during the day for anyone there to freedive. "This is not race for speed or depth," Katrina advises. "Be calm. Do not waste breath or strength. Save both for when you fight. If creatures here are like ones from my home, they are strong, and they fight. Do not swim here if you are afraid. Do not push your body." For weaker swimmers, there's plenty to do on the boat under Sable's watchful eye. Keeping a lookout, prepping the nets in case there's something that needs to be hauled aboard, and spotting and disentangling sea creatures that might need some help with whatever plastic or line that's been caught on them are the primary duties.

The boat sets anchor, keeping an eye out for any rogue waves, and it's into the water for the freedivers. The first thing that becomes abundantly clear is that there is a lot of trash off the coast of Gloucester. Far more than seems reasonable, in fact. It's as though someone tipped a cargo ship containing heaps of the stuff out nearby. The second thing to become clear is that at least some of the trash is alive. The mermaids, if you could call them that, seem to be made of the stuff. Their long fingers are made of hooks and broken bits of metal, their webbing is plastic bags and discarded netting, their hair is fishing line and wires. Whatever has been thrown into the ocean has been pulled together into these merciless beings. Any diver grabbed by one will need to think quickly and fight hard to escape, or they'll find themselves rapidly pulled deeper, limbs entangled.

It's not a completely one-sided fight. The harpoon spears seem to stun them momentarily when pieces are knocked apart or off. But it's getting a net over the mermaids and hauling them up into the open air that seems to kill them. Mermaids raised out of the water for more than a few seconds break apart into lifeless trash. Maybe get some trash skimmers. There's a lot of clean-up to do out here.

➥ Mod Notes

• GENERAL - Players are welcome to play background NPCs for themselves when they are needed in a thread. If you need more information on general behavior for these types of NPCs, please feel free to ask! In general, the information provided in the prompts should be sufficient and ordinary people will act like… ordinary people! Although, the people of Gloucester seem to be becoming more and more aware of supernatural phenomenon and they are frightened by it. You're welcome to make up any details beyond that for your specific scene. Also, please remember that character deaths are permanent and plan accordingly!
  
  
• THE PUBLIC EYE (16-31 August) - Characters who do not have actual bodies can still have their consciousness hijacked and pulled into a camera. In those instances, if they can see where their 'body' was, they'll simply be able to see the device that their ghostly form is usually attached to. This seems to be an entirely supernatural phenomenon with no coding or commands being executed to cause this. Cameras that are checked will appear to be completely ordinary to the technological eye. Those who might have some kind of supernatural sense that they are feeding might get some read off of various cameras that indicate they might be about to snag someone's consciousness. The various items that characters observe in cameras are welcome to be followed up on. For prompts that involve unnamed NPCs, players are welcome to assume interactions and take control of those NPCs. Anyone wishing to try to fix something (like the vegetable lamb infestation) will be encouraged to take care of it directly by ADI with another team member. Named NPCs can be found and/or confronted in the NPC Top Level below.
  
  
• ROGUE WAVE (16-31 August) - Characters will have the opportunity to assist locals in a variety of ways; players are welcome to invent their own scenarios for assisting local residents and businesses (as well as shoring up ADI property) and play any unnamed NPCs as desired. Characters who are able to get a better look at the serpent through magical or technological means will see that it has fishhooks and other detritus stabbed into its scales and that the creatures harassing it are the same mermaids seen in the Nereid prompt. The serpent's thrashing and subsequent rogue waves will diminish as the mermaids are killed off following the events of that prompt.
  
  
• THICKER THAN WATER (16-31 August) - No more than two characters will be trapped in the submarine at the same time, players are welcome to come up with alien plant life and structures they might find in the camera, but there will be very little life found beyond the encounters with the leviathan. Bones of impossibly huge creatures, brief snaps of a fin or a scale, huge teeth, and other such oddities may also be spotted at the listed coordinates. Characters can either finish the assignment or simply wait it out, but the pressure will increase, filling the chamber slowly with blood. Before they can drown, however, the sub will be crushed either through pressure or through the jaws of the creature, and characters will find themselves suddenly jolted awake again where they’d been before the siren sounded. No time (or very little time) appears to have passed. They will be unharmed; though, they might find blood still lingering under their nails or trickling from the corner of their mouths or eyes.
  
  
• NEREID (19 August) - Sable's boat, the Minx is a large vessel with plenty of room for as many characters as might like to come on this adventure. Characters do not have to get into the water and will be relatively safe as long as they stay in the boat. Sea creatures tangled with the garbage include things like seabirds, sea turtles, and even a few dolphins, seals, and sharks. Sable will be able to guide characters on how to safely catch creatures to free them or to help them from a safe distance. There's plenty of deck space for if and when characters need to start hauling up mermaids. Once characters provide info on what's going on, ADI will take efforts to start a large-scale clean-up operation with multiple rented vessels to dispose of the mermaids. Players are welcome to have their characters assisting with those endeavors throughout the end of the month.

↬ Main Navigation

Comments

[fightinginfinity]

[ Things are way more mellow down here, Tony realizes, than up on the surface; the tumultuous waves, the trash and filth, the hideous monstrosities... They're far away now. The stillness and darkness that's swallowing him as he sinks kind of reminds him of space, actually. The silence too, as peaceful as it is horrifying. Like he's right where he'd left off. Too bad Nebula isn't around... He'd liked her.

The sensation of suffocating is a bit more acute here than it was before; Tony's muscles are starting to spasm and he's rapidly losing consciousness, so he's either going to gulp water into his lungs by reflex or by virtue of being passed the fuck out. Which one is it gonna be? Place your bets, Tony would joke if he could. Either way it's game over.

He feels a tug on his shirt the second unconsciousness wins. ]

[worthallthis]

[The pole bumps into Steve's shoulder instead of Tony's, since Tony just kept sinking, the idiot. It nudges at Steve a second time once he's got Tony's shirt. Grab hold, buddy, Winter will haul you both up.]

[punched_hitler]

[Tony is like a dead weight - unconscious, Steve thinks - and he's just about to try to start hauling him up when something bumps his shoulder and he starts, twisting in the water, adrenaline already spiking higher as he expects it to be one of the mermaids -

But it's not. It's Winter's pole. Steve practically exhales on the spot as it nudges him again - but fortunately doesn't - and grabs at it with his free hand, trying to twist and then heft Tony up a little more securely, arm wrapped around his chest as he tugs twice at the pole, trying to signal to pull them up.]

[fightinginfinity]

[ Tony is limp as a puppet indeed, dangerously still and turning a worrying shade of grey-blue. He doesn't make a sound--but, very suddenly and very strangely, something mechanical does, a tinny ringing sound filling the air as soon as Tony's hand pops above the water.

It's the watch-gauntlet fastened over his wrist and hand, which Tony had programmed to monitor changes in his heart rate and pulse alongside its functions as a weapon. His suit has a similar feature (and a whole lot more, obviously); this is just a smaller version, created and installed to monitor Tony's vitals and also serve as a sort of metronome for breathing through anxiety attacks.

Or rather, that's what it usually does. You know, when respiration is actually occurring. Right now it's performing another useful function, which is making a bit of a fuss when Tony, incidentally, isn't breathing at all. ]

[worthallthis]

[Winter takes that signal and hauls at the pole, hand over hand, until they've both got their heads above water.

Then he heels hauling, towing them both up to the side of the boat so Steve can grab ahold of that.]

Pass him up. Is he breathing?

[Winter can't tell from here. The bobbing of boat and water make it hard to tell, and that ringing is annoying as hell.]

[punched_hitler]

[Steve's arms are burning a little by the time Winter gets them up; he's cold and tired and maybe he's never been one to panic, but,] I don't know.

[Although, honestly, he takes one look at the pallor of Tony's skin and,] No. Shit, no. He - do you know CPR?

[Steve's already fumbling Tony up into Winter's hands, arms and hands shaking a little from exertion and cold, but trying to clamber up onto the deck the second Winter's got the body out of his arms.] I do if you don't, [he specifies in a rush, words almost slurring a little - but if Winter does, he's fresher.

Fuck it, Tony, you are not dying here. Today.]

[worthallthis]

[Winter hauls Tony up onto the deck, first on his back to put flesh fingers to his neck to check for a pulse, but then gives Steve a blank kind of a look as he offers the metal hand to haul him up, next.]

Do I know what.

[punched_hitler]

[ Yeah, okay, that answers that. Steve starts pulling himself faster onto the deck, motioning at Winter once he's got a free arm. ] Turn him over onto his back and get clear. I got this.

[ Once Tony's on his back, Steve crawls over to him, and doesn't even need to check for a pulse - aside from the watch-thing on Tony's wrist beeping madly, the way he looks says everything.

He reaches over, squeezes Tony's nose shut, and gives him a few quick rescue breaths before he pulls back and starts in on the chest compressions. ]

Watch me, [ he says to Winter, absently. ] If you think you can do this, we can switch off in a few minutes, or find someone else on board who does.

[ God, he hopes Tony's breathing in a few minutes, but he's got to plan ahead. And without the serum, chest compressions are going to tire him out pretty quickly. ]

[worthallthis]

[Winter is definitely watching. If this is something one can do to help someone, you can be sure he wants to learn it. Even if his skin crawls a little at the thought of the rescue breaths. He's pretty sure Tony Stark wouldn't want him that close.

After two reps, he says,]

Let me do the chest thing.

[He might not have his serum recall anymore, but he's still quick to pick things up by watching, and that doesn't seem that hard. And he thinks they can get up a steadier rhythm working together.]

[punched_hitler]

[Steve's very focused; he gets another few compressions in before he glances over at Winter, but if there's anyone he trusts to learn fast, anyone he trusts with Tony's life, it's this man.

(Tony might not be thrilled to know that, if he ever finds out, but you know what, he kind of doesn't get a say at the moment.)]

Okay, [he says, practically throwing himself out of the way, but then leaning back over to reach out and interlace Winter's hands the right way, place them where they need to go on Tony's chest, pull Winter into the right position over him.] Push down about two inches. Try not to crack his ribs, but I'd rather that than let him die. Do it as fast as I was, about a hundred times a minute. Doesn't have to be exact.

[Once he gets all the words out in only a small cascade, he lets Winter try, watching and correcting anything if he needs it. He also scoots himself around to sit in the best place for rescue breaths when they're needed. It really is better, to have two people doing this instead of one.]

[worthallthis]

[Winter nods once, and gets to work. He is, in fact, pretty good at mimicking and this is important. He copies what Steve had been doing pretty much exactly, using the flesh hand against Tony's chest just in case. He'd rather break his own hand than Tony's ribs, here, but he knows how not to grip too hard with metal fingers.]

[fightinginfinity]

[ Tony hasn't ever been religious, not even when he was a kid. He went through the expected motions, sure; he said grace at meals, went to church on Christmas...but there's no denying that they're inherently at odds, spirituality and science. A lot of people in Tony's field of work seem to find a happy medium despite this, are somehow able to compromise enough to live in a world where logic and belief can coexist peacefully, and honestly? Tony envies them. Such a mindset would be a literal godsend, a blessed reprieve from the creak of his own psyche as it constantly wars between his stubbornly rational mind and the eternal influx of impossibilities around him.

But yeah, TL;DR, there's no light at the end of the tunnel. There wasn't one last time and there isn't one now. It's fine; Tony hadn't been expecting one...though honestly, maybe there's something to be said for how often he manages to come back to life whenever this shit happens to him.

The thing about being fully dead for a second, though, is that you aren't alive to see anything anyway, or register the passage of time. So the instant after Tony passes out in the water he wakes with a shocked and ragged gasp on land, pain ripping through his chest as his body involuntarily jerks upward and sideways until it collides with a solid mass of something beside him. In a state of absolute blind panic, Tony flails about for a second before he seizes that solid mass of something--which happens to be Winter, incidentally--and latches his arms around it, clinging as if he is still adrift at sea and about to be swept away again. ]

[worthallthis]

[Winter twitches back, and promptly falls on his ass on the boat deck, looking a little wild around the eyes but managing not to throw the recently-dead man off of him. Just barely.

He even gathers up enough wit to say, albeit kind of blankly,]

Tony. You're okay. We got you out.

[punched_hitler]

[Steve just barely manages to fling himself back in time to avoid Tony smacking his forehead into Steve's nose. Once he's got his bearings, he reaches out, puts a hand on Tony's back between his shoulder blades, just rests it there.]

Hey, you're okay. We got you. You're okay.

[He glances at Winter, not sure how much the guy loves being clung to, but he's not about to pull Tony away unless it looks like an imminent meltdown is brewing.]

Take a couple deep breaths, if you can.

[He's not sure which of them he's addressing. Both, probably.]

[fightinginfinity]

[ For a few long moments Tony just...stays like that, clinging tight to Winter, gasping for breath, white as a sheet and trembling violently from what he'll later insist is just the cold. For someone who is typically all words all the time, both internally and externally, he's startlingly silent on both fronts now.

It's weird. This is his, what, third near-death experience? Fourth? He should be an old pro at this by now. But he looks as if he's seen a ghost...and in a way, he has.

Tony's powers of thought and speech start to return to him as soon as he feels Steve's hand on his back and hears his voice over the sound of his own strangled breaths, and loosens his hold on Winter as he grapples reality back into focus. What he eventually ends up doing is seizing Steve too, gripping his sleeve as if to tug him closer and effectively clinging to both men now. ]

Steve. [ He has to tell Steve something. It's just a very devastating something. Give him a second, okay? Both of you stay put. Just stay. Especially you, Steve. ]

[worthallthis]

[Winter manages a minute or so more of cling before extracting himself and giving Tony a little push at Steve, arm making an unhappy grinding noise.

He is absolutely letting Steve take point here. Tony can keep a hand on his shirt or arm or something, if he wants, but full-on clinging is just going to make him want to hit something, and he doesn't want that something to be Tony. Or the boat.

What he does say is,]

You're not going in the water again.

[punched_hitler]

[Steve's attention is already largely on Tony; it only gets more focused when the man says his name, but then Winter's definitely trying to extract himself and get Steve to take over as the focus for Tony's clinging, and Steve obliges. He scoots himself a little closer to the guy, sort of wrapping his arm around him in a half-hug. Steve's cold, now, out of the water - Tony must be, too, although he's likely in shock and not quite feeling it yet. He doesn't try to make Tony release Winter entirely, but he does definitely try to make his own body as available as possible as he nods when Winter speaks - yeah, that's a given. A very, very big given.]

Yeah, I think we're done swimming for the day. Let's just... sit here, okay? We're good here, for a minute.

[Tony's lungs sound mostly clear, now, and clearly he's up and breathing, though Steve's going to see if they can't get someone with more than just basic field first aid training to look at the guy in short order. He'd also like to get some blankets or towels, but with Tony grabbing at both of them, that's out of the picture for the moment, too. Maybe he can send Winter in a second. Because,] I'm here.

:)

[fightinginfinity]

[ That very combination of shock cold + actual fucking cold has Tony shivering more and more violently by the second, but he still seems hell-bent on telling Steve something even as his lips start to turn an increasingly corpselike shade of blue. He responds well enough to being passed along like a fussy child, at least, gravitating to the warmth Steve seems to naturally radiate even when he isn't running hot from the serum.

But even as he huddles as close to Steve as he can, Tony still keeps one hand weakly curled around Winter's sleeve, as if he has any chance of keeping the guy there should he decide to up and leave all of a sudden. Look, logic isn't really the primary character at play right now, as rare as that is for Tony. All he can think about in this moment is how they both need to stay. ]

Steve. [ Tony grits his name out yet again through chattering teeth. ] S-Steve... I g-get it now. I know. It was...it's m-me. I-I'm the...

[ More shivering. More chattering. Come on, words. It's not like Tony just figured this out, after all...he's known for a while, deep down. ] Who we l-lose. You said we-- [ Spit it out, Stark. ] Strange d-didn't wanna say, the k-kid didn't wanna s-say, you didn't... B-but I g-get it now. I know why. It's because it's me.

[worthallthis]

[Winter has no idea what Tony's going on about, given he's from years before any of that happens, but in his experience, people say weird things when they almost die. Or are about to die. Whichever. He stays put, but he does lean over to accept the towel the ship's captain has ready for them, and drapes that awkwardly with his one free arm over Tony's shoulders and head.]

[punched_hitler]

[Maybe people do say weird things when they almost die, but... this weird thing isn't wrong. Steve's arm tightens around Stark, and he maybe takes a few seconds longer than he should to adjust that towel, to try to rub at Tony's hair a little. The gesture feels a little foreign, but it gives him just a minute to compose himself. To try to compose his face.]

Yeah, [he says, softly. Because he won't lie. He won't.] It was you. It - wasn't only you. But it was you, too.

[There's a part of him that wonders, maybe almost desperately, if knowing might save Tony's life. If somehow Steve can just... tell him enough to change things when he goes back. If he goes back.

It's got to be possible, he thinks. After all, it's sort of what he's planning to do. Which - maybe he won't be, can't be, if things change, and Jesus, his head already hurts enough from the cold and the stress, he'd rather not add going in circles trying to understand timelines and time travel and cause and effect just right now at the moment.

So instead, he squeezes Tony again, and says, voice maybe just a little rougher than it was a minute ago,] It was really damn good to see you here.

[He glances up at Winter, tries to offer him a shaky smile, as if to say, You, too.]

[fightinginfinity]

[ Tony expects some wave of existential horror to hit him once he hears that confirmation, something cataclysmic and dark and terrifying breaking him the way that first trip into the wormhole had broken him, but neither thing happens. He doesn't even have a fucking panic attack, though that might be because shock just cancels out anxiety or some shit he'd ask Strange about if he were still kicking it here. Did he die too, back home? What about the others? He'd seen them all die before, after all. Steve. Bruce, Natasha, Thor. Barton. Barton's family, probably. They could all be dead too.

Or Rhodey. Or Happy. Or Pep--

Ah, okay. There's that panic now.

Thankfully, though, Steve... Steve isn't dead. Not right now. Steve is talking. Steve is here. Even if all Tony hears right now is static, he can feel Steve's voice against his body, and he's here, and he's holding him, and he hasn't left. Barnes hasn't left either, which will surprise Tony later. Much later. Right now... ]

M'so tired.

[ Very anticlimactic after the last few lines of dialogue, certainly, but whatever. Tony's life isn't a shitty daytime drama, even though it feels that way. Anyway, he really wants to pass out, but he's suddenly very convinced that he'll die if he does--or worse, Steve will leave again. No, better stay and hang onto the guy and Winter like a scared fucking child. He certainly goddamn feels like one. ]