futurology ⊛ network sample post

[hyperverbose]

Question that I'm already sure I'm going to regret asking:

Is someone actually expecting us to wear these uniforms?  They're not exactly GQ, and the fact that one seems to keep magically appearing in my closet when I try to toss it out is starting to scream cult dynamic.  I'm not gonna wake up sewn into one next week, am I?

Comments

[hyperverbose]

He is what he is. All it takes is for someone to flip the switch and it won't matter how long he's gone without.

[expatriates]

How long have you been without?

[ It's a low blow, especially when she's been talking to Pepper and this all but lays it out there, but it's one she's not sorry to have made when he's treading this line, when he dug himself down here and turned this into a metaphor. All Nat's doing is unraveling it.

That's how she rationalizes it. ]

[hyperverbose]

[ he knew it was where she was driving anyway, but to him it's not the same. it can't be. ] If you think I'm forgetting about the blood on my own hands, then you can save it.

The difference is that we were willing to own up to who we were, knowing there were gonna be consequences. [ that was exactly how he'd wound up so squarely on the side he'd taken in this internal battle of theirs, after all. admitting that what they were doing had led to lives lost that should never have been, being willing to deal with consequences for it, even when they might have trampled over what he considered his rights in the past.

and nat, well. she'd allowed everything about her own gory past to be exposed in the worst way, with the collapse of shield, and that could have ended much, much more terribly for her. ]

[expatriates]

I know what side I'm on. You don't have to recite the party line for me.

[ Which is, honestly, laughable at this point because they both know why she's on the run. They both know why she had to disappear. ]

But what you're doing here, this isn't about the Accords. It's about Bucky.
I'm worried that you're going to cross a line—and trust me, I've seen the other side of it, and you won't come back.

[hyperverbose]

my PARENTS, nat

[ in other words, he's not denying anything she's saying, any of her concerns. in fact, he's probably just as afraid as she is of what this could do to him. but all of that is balancing against the weight of how much that singular event devastated his entire existence, and that weight is heavier than anything else he's ever carried. ]

How am I supposed to walk away

[expatriates]

[ It stings because she knows that she can't provide an answer—this isn't something that she can help him through, give him the cheat sheet, drag him out of because it's not something that she knows personally. The one thing Natasha will never, can never have, and the one thing that can bring every rational thought in Tony Stark's mind to a standstill: family. ]

You know I can't answer that. I can't tell you that I understand what you're going through because I don't.

[ And for a minute, she flounders there, trying to find an answer, trying to find something that she can say to make him understand. ]

But I know that you signed the Accords because you believe that we should be held accountable, and if you take this into your own hands, then you're undermining all of that.

[hyperverbose]

And if I'm willing to be held accountable for what I do? Let justice run its course?

[ it's a harsh admission - that maybe he thinks that whatever happens to him next doesn't matter, as long as he gets to make good for how bucky destroyed his family. ]

What he did has to be answered for.

[expatriates]

Does it?
Bucky took your parents, so you take Steve's best friend? Is that equitable? Does it bring them back or salve the wound to thrust your loss onto someone else?

[ To a certain degree, the question is actually genuine. Loss and revenge are something that she hardly understands because she lacks the necessary investment to prompt either—she doesn't have a family to lose, so she can't see the threads of Tony's logic here in the same way. ]

[hyperverbose]

The man Steve's so hellbent on saving is already gone. He lost him years ago. Just because he doesn't want to accept that doesn't make it less true.

[expatriates]

So is the man who killed your parents.

[ That, she does have experience with. Natasha won't claim that he isn't still responsible for it, that his hands didn't do the deed, just like she wouldn't claim that she wasn't responsible for what she did; but she's not that person anymore, and neither is Bucky. ]