(no subject)

[quigonejinn]

LAST SUNDAY IN NOVEMBER. So the last time I am, inside my own cracky little head, obligated to do this.



1.

Tony doesn't smash the glass in his workshop. Obadiah still takes the house bank for Jarvis offline, though, and still comes over. He still takes the arc reactor. Tony still has the spare down in the shop.

But because Tony never turned the repulsor on the wall, because Jarvis is offline, Jim can't get in to help Tony onto his feet: Jim is limited to waving and gesturing through the glass and banging on it a whole goddamn lot, but for the first three, four minutes, Tony is too exhausted to do more than wave back, vaguely. He doesn't need to be told that Pepper is still probably in danger, but he doesn't know that she would be going with SHIELD to the campus to arrest Obadiah, and really, he never carried through that threat to have a GPS chip implanted in her ankle one night when she had passed out asleep with Stark Foundation grants under her cheek. That turns out not to be a problem, though, because Jim, being an Eagle Scout, happens to have a Sharpie in his pocket so he writes the message on the class. Tony, being a genius, manages to read the message backward and collects enough of his strength to crawl over to the suit, thank his lucky engineering star that he put the suit assembly system on a different server than house-Jarvis, and flies out to campus.

Tony didn't smash the glass in his workshop, though.

By the time Tony gets to the campus, SHIELD has a bleeding, cursing Obadiah strapped to a gurney.

Agent Coulson is zipping Pepper into a bodybag.

2.

Tony doesn't smash the glass in his workshop. Obadiah still takes the house bank for Jarvis offline, though, and still comes over. He still takes the arc reactor. Tony still has the spare down in the shop.

He took Butterfinger offline, though, before going upstairs to find out what the matter was with Jarvis. Some tinkering he wanted to do with the servo interface code, and Dummy has never shown the initiative that Butterfingers did, and Tony makes a second desperate lunge and succeeds in knocking the arc reactor off his work bench. The glass break on the floor, and Tony drags himself towards the arc reactor: this is about when Jim arrives. He comes into the house at a jog; when he sees that the light stay fixedly off and that there is no Jarvis directing him to Mr. Stark, he comes down the stairs at a run.

Tony doesn't smash the glass in his workshop, and Jarvis is offline.

SHIELD arrives with Pepper half an hour after that, and Pepper and Agent Coulson pick their way, carefully, down the stairs to the workshop. They find Jim sitting at the bottom, and Pepper makes a noise and brings her hands to her mouth. On the other side of the glass, Tony lies on the floor with the arc reactor two feet from his fingers.

On this side of the glass, Jim has a dented fire extinguisher by his feet. Coulson puts his hand on Jim's shoulder, but Jim doesn't move.


Now, go watch this and tell me that you don't want the Avengers movie right. fucking. now.

Comments

[th3newblack.livejournal.com]

Loved it ♥♥♥ You need to give me a happy ending now and then though, I always end up feeling depressed when I read your stuff. Though it means you're an excellent storyteller, on the plus side.


and re: clip. There were so many awesome plot arcs prior to Civil War that would allow people to use clips of all the movies we've had so far, why have so many talented people focusing on such a terrible plot arc ):

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

The way I figure, the movie is the happy ending. It's the best that Tony could have turned out, you know. Let us be glad that was the way it really was, and not the one where Tony tries to figure out who he needs to call about Pepper being dead and realizes that she wasn't kidding when she said that she didn't have anybody else.

On the other hand, if somebody were to write Tony, Jim, and Pepper on a desert tropical island during a SHIELD-forced vacation, I would not say no. White bikini for Pepper, blue swim trunk for Jim, and threesome sex by beach fire for everybody.

And. I never quite thought about it that way. What plot arcs would you rather see getting vidded?

[th3newblack.livejournal.com]

This is a very good point. I THINK THAT SOMEBODY SHOULD BE YOU THOUGH.

I guess something just different than Civil War would be nice. Secret Wars is the first that comes to mind even if that did end kind of depressingly as well, but anything that makes people use Hoff!Fury and not Jackson!Fury is A+ in my book.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I say SOMEBODY because I started writing it once and couldn't get anywhere. Probably because there weren't any clone executions on the beach or Obie didn't show up to paralyze Pepper and torture her to death in front of Tony and Rhodey.

Tony wakes up warm, dry, and mostly pain free. His shoulder aches, but in the grand scale of things, that's not so bad. He goes back to sleep.

...

Tony wakes up warm, dry, and mostly pain free. His shoulder still hurts, but he's getting used to pain like that, so he's in the middle of going back to sleep when he realizes two further items of information. First, he's not wearing his suit. Second, it's really warm. Not just "I haven't passed out in the rubble while wearing the suit, and I'm in an island in the North Atlantic, and I'm too tired to move and I haven't slepped in thirty-six hours, so I'm just going to lock the servo joints and sleep, but with the nasty side-effect of when it down the front of my suit through all the cracks in the helmet and the back, I feel like I've pissed in my wetsuit without enjoying any of the benefits." It's really, genuinely warm. He's been running the suit colder to rqueeze some extra processing cycles out of the secondary scanning units, and it was fine for a couple hours at a time, but more than that -- he's warm all the way down to the bones. It's been a while since that happened.

Fact number three is that Tony can smell the sea.

Shit, he'd passed out on the patio or the roof of the house again, hadn't he?

"Got any twos?" That's Rhodey's voice.

"Go fish." That's Pepper.

What are Rhodey and Pepper doing on the roof?

Tony can't keep his eyes open for another second, though, and goes back to sleep.

...

The third time Tony wakes up, he swings his feet out of bed and finds, to his surprise, that he is not actually on the roof of his house. Or the patio. Or the deck of the SHIELD helicarrier. The floor of the house appears, in fact, to be a little platform underneath a roof; the roof sticks out a little beyond the end of the platform, and it's all sand there. Blindingly sunny outside; the glints off the sea make Tony's eyes hurt, and even though he's still standing in the shade of the beach house, he still puts up a hand to shade his eyes.

"Do you have any jacks?"

Rhodey and Pepper are sitting in the sand, just under the edge of the roof, though Pepper has her feet stuck out and buried in warm sand. Each of them each in lawn chairs, and between them, a low table with its legs buried in the sand.

"Rhodey -- " Pepper says, with a warning sound in her voice.

Wordlessly, Rhodey hands Pepper one card, and she makes a happy noise, takes it, puts together with two she already has, and lays them down on the table.

Tony's eyes are still adjusting, but he thinks this is definitely not waking up in any of the places he expected.

"Hey," Tony says. "Are you guys still playing Go Fish?"

And then his knees give out underneath him. Good thing the floor is sand.

...

Tony wakes up, and it's night time. The world swings and sways; the stars aren't anything like what Tony recognizes, and Tony is trying to figure out what's wrong with his suit interface, how he's managed to get so badly off course, when Rhodey's hand touches him on the shoulder and makes the world stop swaying. "Calm down, big guy."

[th3newblack.livejournal.com]

FINISH THIS PLZ I really like it so far!! You are fabulous with imagery even with just a few lines. Plus you've already given me SPOILERS: GOOD END. Approv'd

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

IF I DO NO. 2, IT WILL NOT BE A GOOD END, OKAY? IT WILL BE -- the clone ends up drowning himself when he realizes that he in't the real Tony Stark. Or he agrees to be Iron Man, to be Tony Stark, and the last line in the fic has him dying a pool of blood, back broken, and Jarvis takes pity on him by letting him see the beach one last time.

I do not think that is what you are looking for, yo.

[th3newblack.livejournal.com]

I guess I would be taking something essentially 'you' away from the fic then, huh. Like if someone asked me to post actually dignified fanart of Tony XD But it is indeed what I'm looking for, in that I'm always in the market for good fic, and you never disappoint (internally I clearly must be eating up the angst). DO 2. DO ITTTT.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I am trying to expand my range, but the only thing I know how to write are dead clones in the sand. Something is wrong with me, I'm pretty sure.

Though you came pretty close to dignified Tony today with the ridiculous fashion sketch from the latest update XD

[th3newblack.livejournal.com]

Pff, seeing as it's fanfiction you should ultimately just do what you enjoy. And if that's dead clones in the sand. Power to you.

LOLOL 'dignified' as in I was laughing through the entire sketch because seriously, the only people who would wear a cape with a suit are those who have a plan to make a dramatic exit. Which Tony does at all times, I'm sure.

[gabby-silang.livejournal.com]

the only thing I know how to write are dead clones in the sand.

I wish you knew how much I love you. There is nothing wrong with you. At IronCon, we will drink two bottles of wine each and write an epic about ten different clones and their full, interesting lives before they all die horribly. Three of them will marry Pepper. One after the other. Two will be Rhodey's lovers. At the same time. One will live on an orbiting satellite.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Gabby, baby. I love you so much. So, so, so, so, so, so much. Who else makes me giggle like this at 1:30 in the morning? Nobody, that's who, and I will drink two bottles of wine and make cow eyes at you and show you the lip-gloss kissed card you sent me, which I will have kissed and kissed until not a speck of pink glitter remains.

Seriously, darling G. ILU.

[gabby-silang.livejournal.com]

You know, if they sort out this recent legal blip, we will totally be able to legally marry there. I bet we could even find an ordained Jedi knight to preside. I BET YOU FIVE DOLLARS.

[amonitrate.livejournal.com]

dammit, I love this one.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

A hand on the side of the bed confirms. Tony is actually in a hammock, and it really is dark outside, not just inside the suit. What he thought were stars are actually white Christmas lights, strung up against the side of the wall over some fairly shitty murals of macaws and parrots. Rhodey is sitting next to him -- it looks like Rhodey has been sitting there for a while. There's a chair, a small table next to the chair, and on the table, a a with half-drunk beer, sweating into the air. There's a Reader's Digest from 1976 turned face-down next to it. Pepper is nowhere in sight.

"Where am I? Tijuana?"

"Somewhere in the Carribbean. I think."

Tony can hear waves breaking on shore. They're pretty close -- high tide?

"You think?" Tony tries to sit up, which doesn't really work because it's a hammock, and it just makes the whole world move again, and to keep from upchucking, Tony has to close his eyes. He doesn't know why he'd get dizzy so much. You'd think that with all the time he spends in the suit -- "You think? Where's my suit? What am I -- "

"The suit is fine. It's down in a box at the end of the bed. SHIELD will be back for us in a couple days."

"What -- "

"It's called vacation, Tony." And Rhodey, the son of a bitch, rocks the hammock again, and Tony has to lie back and close his eyes until it stops moving, which means that, in about ten seconds, Tony is dead asleep.

It's nice to fall asleep with Rhodey's hand on his shoulder like that, though.

...


...

Hunger eventually drives Tony upright and awake for long enough to stagger out of the hammock, and when he does, he finds that it's daylight. Rhodey and Pepper have, in fact, abandoned him, but on the table where they were playing Go Fish, Pepper has left him an MRE. The corner is peeled back and everything, and from feeling the bottom of the tray, Tony decides that she did, in fact, warm it up for him, but that he's been asleep so long that it started to get cool again.

After poking at it a little and looking at the box at the foot of the bed -- yeah, large enough to hol dthe suit, yeah, it sounds like things are in a couple different pieces, no, he can't see anything around that'll pick a biometric lock like that, short of being able to pull something Macguyveresque with Christmas lights and canned peaches -- Tony decides that he'll take the suggestion and eat the MRE. So he sits down in the chair that Pepper had been sitting in, looks at the sea, and eats soggy meatloaf and potatoes and warmed up canned peaches. There's a breeze coming in off the sea, and Tony digs his feet into the sand where it's been warmed by the sun. Falls asleep waiting for Pepper and Rhodey to come back.

And then dafnap, I think, suggested that this could all be a "The Island" kind of thing where this is Clone Pepper, Clone Rhodey, and Clone Tony kinda thing where they're just waiting to be harvested. Or where Real Pepper and Real Rhodey are trying to convince a Clone Tony that he is the real thing.

[th3newblack.livejournal.com]

Awesome awesome. And oooh, I like suggestion two, that sounds really interesting. Kind of reminds me of one of the current plotlines except clones are totally cooler than skrulls, thnx. Do ittttt.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

You. Are evil. I need kittens now.

[dafnap.livejournal.com]

Agent Coulson is zipping Pepper into a bodybag.

It's kind of amazing how much I hate you right now, Jesus CHRIST. amonitrate and I leave you alone for ONE DAY and you off Pepper AND Tony.

On this side of the glass, Jim has a dented fire extinguisher by his feet.

I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. NO MORE WRATH OF KHAN FOR YOU YOUNG LADY, JESUS.

[smilingskull.livejournal.com]

I manage to kill Tony about 9 ways to Tuesday in one fic and then you go and kill Pepper and it hurts so much more. D: Seriously, you are like the master of awesomely heart wrenching. In the best possible, painful way. WATCH ME MAKE ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE.

To sum this up: you = awesomex2, this fic = even more awesome, you + this fic = even more awesomex2.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

EXCUSE ME MISS WITH THE CASUAL DROP IN ABOUT THE MURDER OF JIM RHODES. JESUS CHRIST, THE NOISE I MADE. THE NOISE. I. MADE.

I'm just, like, flagellating myself over how I haven't had that LJ friended for some undgodly unknown reason. And I see that you have written genderbending Tony and Avengers and I lack the brain processing power to handle it because I tried, and I just got to the image of SUPERHOT CAPTAIN AMERICA and had it all short out on me.

[wildes.livejournal.com]

I love that fact that in your world, everyone dies because of a glass wall. That is just...insert word, whatever. I can't describe it. It rocks, in the way that messed up things sometimes do.

And I'd love to see Tony and Obadiah face to face and number one. Actually, I actually keep thinking about Tony and Obadiah confronting each other outside of battle or without one of them being paralyzed. Or maybe with Obadiah paralyzed instead. So that's been in my head lately, and with the added death of Pepper I can't imagine how messed up and interesting that would be. Okay, anyway. I love how it takes me so many words to just say that I generally adore this and you are quickly becoming my favorite thing about the IM fandom.

[gabby-silang.livejournal.com]

When I cry, I do the slow clap. I am doing that clap now.

[katanath.livejournal.com]

Okay, this is just heartbreaking. How any one little detail totally derails the whole thing into WOE.

....You bring the bloodbath, I'll supply bubbles?

[jamaillith.livejournal.com]

ASDSD;KSDJ how did I miss this.

Goddamn, Rhod, I knew it was coming but it still hurt like a punch to the heart. Oh, Rhodey. I like the link between the ending of the second one and the Clonefic of Doom (Coulson with his hand on Jim's shoulder, because you know it's Coulson down there on the sand). Yeah, the movieverse? The best of all worlds. Seriously.

Just. Yeah. ♥

[amonitrate.livejournal.com]

ok, so, I previously thought #2 was more upsetting than #1, but today dafnap schooled me on why that is not right at all, because in #1 Tony thinks he's made it on time.

owwww.

[pensive]

Every time I read one of these AUs I, at some point, will yell, "WHAT. THE FUCK." You must have found the Sekrit Idea Bank of the Universe because my guts are on the floor. I can't deal.

Amazing how Tony Hating Himself can save his life (or others')

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

This idea bank is basically called dafnap. She tells me things. And all I do is carry them out.

[pensive]

I bow before both the Idea Bank of dafnap and The Obedient Minion-ness of quigonejinn