CRAZY TONY AND THE CLONE BABIES.
May. 26th, 2008 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quigonejinnClone fic posted entirely too soon after I talked about it with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eponis and swingchick, so the ideas didn't entirely percolate properly. I'm on Try 4, and it's got promise.
Like most, you have no memory of the beginning. Later, you will have grounds to speculate as to the reasons for this, but your first clear memory is of being in a car with Tony Stark driving. You cannot recall learning to read, but somehow you can, and you point out to Tony that the instruction label on the strap over your chest suggests that people your size should not be seated in the front seat of a car.
He looks over, delighted: your experience of the world is limited, but somehow, that does not seem like it ought to be the usual response.
...
Heat, for example, is new to your experience. The word lies in your memory, but you have no sensation that attaches to it until Tony brings the car to a stop far in the countryside, where no car has passed you and Tony for for almost an hour. You fumble with the catches, so he comes around and opens the door and you step onto the asphalt barefoot.
You wobble -- you cannot remember standing before -- so you catch yourself against the car. You worry that he will be angry because you heard him curse the condition of the roads and what the flying gravel were doing to the sides of the car, but when you look up, he is looking at you, not the car.
"Can you walk?" His voice sounds strange.
"The ground feels strange," you say, not wanting to let him know that you suddenly cannot remember how to keep your balance.
Dark is settling around both of you, but it is still light enough to see that he has a curious expression on his face. He picks you up, gently, and carries you up the path into the house.
...
In the morning, you wake in sunlight and come out of your bedroom into a room with a sink and flat surfaces and bumpy ones. A kitchen. You remember the word after a moment of thought, and from the cool of the night, the floor is almost cold against your feet. Your wrists stick out of the nightdress when you are quite sure that they did not when you went to sleep the night before.
"Mr. Stark is in the garage," a voice says. "I have told him that you are awake, and he is on his way here now."
It does not feel as strange as it might to have a sound come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
The voice adds, after a moment, "If you are thirsty, Ms. Potts, the refrigerator contains orange juice, distilled water, and milk."
...
"Why does Jarvis call you Mr. Stark?"
The tie feels odd around your arm, and when you look down at your arm
...
Some years on, it's May, and Tony Stark's personal assistant comes into the secondary garage to find his driver waxing the black Bugatti. There are no windows, and the angle of the lights overhead throws her face and torso into strange shapes on the car hood.
"You're going to want the detailing and cleaning people standing by tonight. He convinced to give some poor woman to give him her ba -- "
The driver straightens up from the surface. "Baby? I put a toddler car seat into the Audi this morning. He said he was going to leave you a message, too. About being gone until June, and he put two of the cell phones over there on the table."
...
"Apple," Tony says. The landscape, now that they had left the environs of Orange County, was starting to flatten and dry.
"Apple."
"Mesa."
"Mesa."
"Supersonic combustion ramjet."
"Su-supersonic combus -- combus -- ?"
....
The diner is wide, and the sunlight, at this time of the day, is almost blinding. Tony stands outside on the curb, having an argument on his very last cell phone.
"I would like some fries. And a strawberry milkshake. He wants a cheese -- cheeseburger."
The light makes it hard to see anything of the girl's face, but the voice comes from just over the top of the banquette table.
"What's your name, sweetheart?"
"Pepper."
Pepper pushes a fifty dollar bill towards the waitress, and Tony comes through the doors of the diner. There's sweat on his face, and his foot hurts, a little, from kicking the curb after grinding his phone into it.
...
"Why do you call me Pepper?"
"It's a good name." He looks over. She asked for a second strawberry milkshake in her lap as they were leaving, and it's half gone now. "You don't like it? I can call you Virginia."
"Where are we going?"
eponis and swingchick, so the ideas didn't entirely percolate properly. I'm on Try 4, and it's got promise. Like most, you have no memory of the beginning. Later, you will have grounds to speculate as to the reasons for this, but your first clear memory is of being in a car with Tony Stark driving. You cannot recall learning to read, but somehow you can, and you point out to Tony that the instruction label on the strap over your chest suggests that people your size should not be seated in the front seat of a car.
He looks over, delighted: your experience of the world is limited, but somehow, that does not seem like it ought to be the usual response.
...
Heat, for example, is new to your experience. The word lies in your memory, but you have no sensation that attaches to it until Tony brings the car to a stop far in the countryside, where no car has passed you and Tony for for almost an hour. You fumble with the catches, so he comes around and opens the door and you step onto the asphalt barefoot.
You wobble -- you cannot remember standing before -- so you catch yourself against the car. You worry that he will be angry because you heard him curse the condition of the roads and what the flying gravel were doing to the sides of the car, but when you look up, he is looking at you, not the car.
"Can you walk?" His voice sounds strange.
"The ground feels strange," you say, not wanting to let him know that you suddenly cannot remember how to keep your balance.
Dark is settling around both of you, but it is still light enough to see that he has a curious expression on his face. He picks you up, gently, and carries you up the path into the house.
...
In the morning, you wake in sunlight and come out of your bedroom into a room with a sink and flat surfaces and bumpy ones. A kitchen. You remember the word after a moment of thought, and from the cool of the night, the floor is almost cold against your feet. Your wrists stick out of the nightdress when you are quite sure that they did not when you went to sleep the night before.
"Mr. Stark is in the garage," a voice says. "I have told him that you are awake, and he is on his way here now."
It does not feel as strange as it might to have a sound come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
The voice adds, after a moment, "If you are thirsty, Ms. Potts, the refrigerator contains orange juice, distilled water, and milk."
...
"Why does Jarvis call you Mr. Stark?"
The tie feels odd around your arm, and when you look down at your arm
...
Some years on, it's May, and Tony Stark's personal assistant comes into the secondary garage to find his driver waxing the black Bugatti. There are no windows, and the angle of the lights overhead throws her face and torso into strange shapes on the car hood.
"You're going to want the detailing and cleaning people standing by tonight. He convinced to give some poor woman to give him her ba -- "
The driver straightens up from the surface. "Baby? I put a toddler car seat into the Audi this morning. He said he was going to leave you a message, too. About being gone until June, and he put two of the cell phones over there on the table."
...
"Apple," Tony says. The landscape, now that they had left the environs of Orange County, was starting to flatten and dry.
"Apple."
"Mesa."
"Mesa."
"Supersonic combustion ramjet."
"Su-supersonic combus -- combus -- ?"
....
The diner is wide, and the sunlight, at this time of the day, is almost blinding. Tony stands outside on the curb, having an argument on his very last cell phone.
"I would like some fries. And a strawberry milkshake. He wants a cheese -- cheeseburger."
The light makes it hard to see anything of the girl's face, but the voice comes from just over the top of the banquette table.
"What's your name, sweetheart?"
"Pepper."
Pepper pushes a fifty dollar bill towards the waitress, and Tony comes through the doors of the diner. There's sweat on his face, and his foot hurts, a little, from kicking the curb after grinding his phone into it.
...
"Why do you call me Pepper?"
"It's a good name." He looks over. She asked for a second strawberry milkshake in her lap as they were leaving, and it's half gone now. "You don't like it? I can call you Virginia."
"Where are we going?"
