tushanshu_logs | if your past calls, don't you pick it up, it's got nothing new to say

Entry tags:

if your past calls, don't you pick it up, it's got nothing new to say

Characters: Tony, Gene, Pepper, Valdis, Miles and Danny
Date: February 8-12
Location: House Spicy Iron Dragon, a kedanese dojo, KPD HQ, the College, Jasmine Dragon Tea House
Situation: Memory sharing catch-all!
Warnings/Rating: mentions of violence, major injury, death, roller skates

1. Pepper | House Spicy Iron Dragon | ɢ ʀ ɪ ᴇ ғ

Ah, it's so nice to have a day off once in a while, to kick back, relax, and... work in the lab. Okay, yeah, his hobbies are exactly the same as his work. So what?

He's been at it a couple hours, so Tony trots upstairs to the kitchen for a refuel. Pepper's already there eating lunch. Tony smiles. "Hey, Pep," he says, grabbing a leftover sandwich from the fridge. "I was gonna make some tea." (Coffee, as scarce as it is, is now reserved for special occasions.) "You want some?"

2. Gene | The Dojo | ғ ᴇ ᴀ ʀ

Tony's been diligent about attending his practice sessions, even with the temporary relocation while the Jade Dojo gets repaired, and it's paying off. He's getting pretty damn good at hand-to-hand combat (if he does say so himself), and he doesn't look like a complete idiot holding a sword.

Gene can still totally kick his ass, though.

"Uuugh," Tony groans from the mat. "My everything hurts." Nevertheless, he's smiling. He props himself up on an elbow and wiggles his other arm at Gene, asking for a hand up. "One more round?"

3. Danny | Jasmine Dragon Tea House | ғ ᴜ ɢ ɪ ᴛ ɪ ᴠ ᴇ

Tony's on edge. The... incidents with Pepper and Gene had been incredibly emotionally draining. Whatever magical bullshit is going around like the flu, Tony wants no further part in it.

He'd needed a little time away from the house, so he's escaped to the Jasmine Dragon tea house, where he's sitting in a corner with some technical diagrams, trying to lose himself in his work. The papers are scattered all over the table (some in dangerous proximity to his pot of tea), and Tony himself, open book that he is, looks a little bit frazzled. It's been a long couple days.

4. Miles | Tony's College lab | ᴄ ᴏ ɴ s ᴜ ᴍ ᴇ

Tony's glad he's just an all-purpose on-call genius and not a professor, because it means he can put the "WARNING: DANGEROUS EXPERIMENTS IN PROGRESS" sign up on his lab door and avoid people without having to cancel any classes.

His working theory on the memory swaps is that the memories have to have some sort of association with the person receiving them (Gene and the plane crash is obvious; Pepper had lost her mother at the same age Tony had; Danny and Tony both had the secret superhero identity thing going on), so there's a lower chance of swapping traumatic memories with random strangers and casual acquaintances. Still, Tony doesn't want to take any chances. Until this is over, he's going to be making the most of the 'antisocial engineering nerd' stereotype.

He can't avoid everyone, though. He's fixed Miles' camcorder, and since they've only met a couple times, Tony figures his risk factor is pretty low. So Tony sends him a quick message letting him know that his camcorder is fixed and waiting for him in the lab. Fingers crossed that nothing weird happens when he shows up!

5. Valdis | KPD Headquarters | ʙ ᴇ ᴛ ʀ ᴀ ʏ ᴀ ʟ

So, based on the reports of the other Foreigners, the only consistent feature of the memory swaps is proximity. Everything else seems pretty much random. Which means Tony can either become a complete recluse for the entire duration of whatever this is, or he can suck it up.

He decides to suck it up. He's got too much going on to just vanish for a week or month or however long (as tempting as it is).

One thing that he definitely doesn't want to let slide is keeping tabs on the Cultists. As a sort-of-consultant to the KPD, he checks in with Valdis regularly to make sure they're on the same page. He doesn't have any new intel this time, but she might, so he drops by her office for a meeting.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Gene's head is still spinning, and he feels like he's going to be sick. Seeing Tony like that - disgusted with what he did, disgusted with him - makes his chest ache and his gorge rise.

Before he's even aware of it, he's ripping the necklace with his rings on it - the necklace that never leaves him - off of his neck and throws it on the ground like a poisonous snake.

And then he does the only thing he can do to keep from hurting Tony further.

He runs.

Tony sees the rings falls to the floor and hears Gene bolt, and he wants to stop him, but by the time he pulls himself together enough to say anything, Gene is, of course, long gone. Maybe that's for the best.

When he doesn't feel like hurling anymore, Tony picks up the rings and stumbles over to the wall and just... sits. He stays like that for a while, staring into empty space, the rings clenched in his hand.

The plane crash and being controlled with the crimson ring are both very high up on Tony's list of Least Favorite Life Events To Revisit. And to see Gene controlling him through Gene's memories... sometimes there are things you just shouldn't know.

He knows Gene's changed. He knows why he did the things he did, and how much he regrets it now. But understanding it – that doesn't help here. This is a far more visceral experience. There's something about it that's just wrong. If someone stabbed you, you wouldn't want to know what it had felt like for them to shove a knife into your guts, would you?

Still, it... it doesn't change anything, Tony thinks. They've dealt with all this before, and moved past it, and Tony's sure they'll be able to put it behind them again. Regularly handling the emotional equivalent of nuclear waste has been a feature of this relationship pretty much since day one.

But holy crap, he's gonna need some time to process this.

He's not really sure how long he sits there, but eventually a couple of kedan come in to use the room, and give him a weird look. He mumbles some excuse and staggers to his feet. Rings still clutched in his hand, he escapes the dojo, and heads for—

Home. There's nothing he'd like to do more than slink off to the College and lock himself in the lab, but he knows that's a bad habit. And last time he'd done that, after Milyn had shown them a glimpse of their universe... it had just made things worse. No. He doesn't want to do it that way again.

So he goes back to the house, and hopes Gene hasn't gotten it into his head to go AWOL for a few days.

Gene had briefly considered fleeing to the turtle's head, but he'd thrown down the rings, and the walk wouldn't help. Being alone with his thoughts for too long without the calming influence of Tu Vishan would lead to nothing good.

Nobody's home, which is good, because he doesn't want anyone to see him looking like he's just accidentally killed someone - wide-eyed, shaky, tears in his eyes that he won't let fall.

He climbs out the window and goes to sit on the roof. If Tony wants to see him, he'll be able to find him. If he doesn't...Gene understands why. Gene doesn't want to be around himself right now, either.

What a disgusting little fool I was, he thinks bitterly, leaning against the side of the building. Even when I'm trying to be better, I'm still hurting Tony. I don't think I'll ever stop.

The aftermath of seeing Milyn a couple of years ago - same time of year, too - is also at the forefront of his mind. I kept telling him I'm a monster. Maybe now he really believes me. A little bit of hysterical laughter bubbles up out of him, choked off with a sob.

At this exact moment, he wants nothing more than to go to the shell's edge and hurl his soul gem into the depths because at least that'll mean he can't hurt people anymore.

Whatever just happened, he's pretty sure that it's his fault.

Edited 2017-02-13 04:13 (UTC)

Gene's not in the kitchen, or the living room. When Tony peeks into their room, he doesn't see him there either, which means he's probably retreated to the roof if he's here at all. So Tony bundles up with the two thickest, fuzziest blankets they have and sticks his head out the window. They really should have just put a balcony out here.

"Hey." There's an uncomfortable pause. "Can I come out there?"

Gene doesn't know how long he's sat out there curled up and crying, but when he hears Tony's voice, he looks up. He looks like a tomato. Nobody's attractive when they cry, but he looks like a goddamn tomato.

"...yeah," he says. He doesn't know if he's going to get read the riot act or what, even though he knows it's what he deserves, and that's on the light end.

Tony wiggles through the window to join Gene, and tosses a blanket at him. It's cold, and he's worried about how long Gene's been sitting out here. Then he bundles himself up and sits down next to Gene.

He doesn't say anything, because he's not sure what to say. But he's here. That counts for something, right?

Gene doesn't move for a second, but then he does actually take the blanket and drape it over himself. Because it is cold.

A few moments pass before he lets out a deep, shuddering sigh and says "Sorry." He makes a face; it's completely inadequate, but...what can he really say?

Then he shakes his head. "That's not...it's not me anymore, it's not who I am. But it's who I was, and I did a lot of unforgivable things. So many unforgivable things. I'm not trying to excuse it, or explain it. But I am sorry. And I'll be sorry until the day I die."

Edited (cranks up the angst) 2017-02-13 22:34 (UTC)

Tony doesn't say 'it's okay,' because it isn't really, but he does nod slowly, and settles on, "I know."

He sighs too. "I know all that, Gene. That's why we're here, right?" Like he's said before: they wouldn't be together if Tony didn't believe Gene had changed.

"It's just really weird to see what happened... like that." He scrubs a hand over his face and pulls his blanket tighter around his shoulders. "It's freaking me out a little." 'A little,' sure, that's not the understatement of the century.

Gene hunches his shoulders even further. "It's probably freaking you out more than a little. It's freaking me out a lot, and I did it. I did...both of them."

He drops his head into his hands. His selfishness, his arrogance, had caused people so much pain. Tony in particular.

"Okay, more than a little," Tony admits. He can't even describe what is so skin-crawling about it, exactly. Remembering having something horrible done to him, but also remembering being the one doing it, and it feeling both right and wrong, and being powerless to stop it either way— it's just weird. And confusing. There's a lot of layers there. Like a terrible, terrible onion.

But he'll get over it. Probably.

"I wish it hadn't been the plane crash," he says, very quietly.

"I wish I hadn't caused the plane crash," Gene says, just as quietly.

He never would have met Tony without it and his machinations - probably - he doubted Zhang would have sent him to the Tomorrow Academy. But that would be a small price to pay. He loves Tony, and he'd rather avoid having caused trauma and pain to him than having them meet, and Gene manipulating him for a year.

A tough call, but, well. If Gene could unmake himself, he would. So many people would be better off if he'd never existed. So many people would be alive if he'd never existed. Everyone who'd died in the Makluan invasion, for one. And his mother.

"I wish I hadn't done all of those things. I wish I hadn't manipulated you in the first place, and I wish I hadn't used you like I did. I did what I thought was important and right, and I was...wrong. I found that out in the worst way. People died because of me.

"If I could take it all back, somehow...I would. In a heartbeat."

Again: "I know." He looks over at Gene. "That's... That's what I mean. I know you're sorry, and you wish you hadn't done it."

He looks away again. "If this was before we came here, I'd say you deserved it. I wanted you to know what it felt like, so you'd know what you'd done to me. Now—" He shrugs.

"Seeing the crash doesn't change anything. It doesn't make anything better. It just sucks."

Gene hunches his shoulders. If it was before we came here...

If the letters hadn't lied or been some trick of the Dreaming, what they did had worked. Some days, he still can't bring himself to believe it.

"I understand if you don't forgive me for what I did, what you saw of my thoughts about it. It was a violation. I'm...good at those," he says, putting a bitter twist on the last few words.

"And the crash was worse than I could have imagined."

"No, Gene, I—" Tony shakes his head and sighs again. "I forgive you. I already did, a long time ago. Yeah, it's still seriously freaky to see it like that, but it's not like I learned anything new."

He reaches through his blanket cocoon to take Gene's hand. "Who you are now is more important to me than who you were then. That's why I didn't want you to see the crash. Because I know you, and I know you're going to feel even worse about it now, and I don't want you to. I didn't want it to hurt you, too."

Gene is, well, gobsmacked. He'd known all of this, really, but it's one thing to know it and another thing entirely to hear it after something this traumatic has happened to both of them.

"How could you possibly forgive me? What have I done to deserve forgiveness? We were both in the head of the person I was at seventeen, and...I don't like him very much.

"And I needed to see the crash. I don't think I understood it before, not completely."

"There are a lot of things you could have done with the crimson ring that I couldn't have forgiven you for," Tony says bluntly.

"But... you didn't. You've done a lot of bad things, Gene. But you're not a bad person. You never were. You can tell me you don't see that, but I do." He squeezes Gene's hand. "That's why I stuck around."

"I know," Gene says softly. That ring is dangerous - a wearable power trip.

When Tony squeezes his hand, he squeezes his eyes shut. "You've been in my head," he says in a low, tortured voice. "You know better than to say that. I'm a bad person trying to be good, and to be honest, I'm shitty at it. I still don't understand why you and Pepper have forgiven me. If I'd been in your place, I don't think I would."

Tony musters a very, very small smile. "See? I told you you'd say that."

A couple of seconds of silence pass, and then Tony says, in a serious tone again, "You're really stubborn about really stupid stuff sometimes, Gene. I don't want to sit here and argue with you about whether or not you're a good person for the millionth time. I want... I want to move on."

He looks away, out across the Sky Sector.

"You've hurt me a lot, Gene, but I still love you. I don't want us to be obsessing about the bad stuff forever."

Gene leans his head on his knees and glances at Tony.

"I don't want to obsess over it either, but I'm finding it hard to stop," he says. "I love you, too. And if you want to move on...I'll try harder to move on, too."

"I know this isn't the kind of thing you just get over overnight," Tony says gently. "And I don't want you to lock it down like you do, either. But we've made this work for two years. And if those letters were real, we figure out a way to make it work back home. And, Marie's met future versions of us that figured out how to be together, too."

He gives Gene a smile that's a little bit wry, a little bit sad, and a little bit fondly exasperated.

"If you won't believe me when I say you're a good person, can you at least work on believing that you're the person I want to be with?"

Gene nods. "We've made it work. And I want to believe in those letters, and what Marie's seen. And I want to be able to believe in myself enough to accept what you tell me, too."

And then he sighs, and tries to smile at Tony. It doesn't totally succeed. "I think I can believe that, yeah. I don't think that's ever been in doubt."

Tony's smile warms. "That's a start."

He leans his head on Gene's shoulder. "Besides, if stuff like this keeps happening, we're eventually going to run out of new ways to hurt each other," he says, with dark humor. Relationship goals!

That makes Gene laugh, just a little. "One of these days." Hopefully sooner rather than later.

"You know I love you, right?"

"Even though I get on your nerves all the time and hoard all the good snacks in my lab?" Tony nudges Gene with his elbow and lets out one little heh of laughter.

"Yeah, I know. I love you too. Even though you used to be kind of a dick. And you hog the shower."

"Hey. You know I need my shower time to think. And besides," Gene says with a sly grin, "nothing's stopping you from joining me, idiot."

if your past calls, don't you pick it up, it's got nothing new to say

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that's not at all how that works, tony, but nice try

he tries so hard

they will always find new ways to Suffer

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