middleofsomewhere | The Endless River

The Endless River

On the morning of day twenty one of the month of Kazoo there is a message on the ICP screens around the train. Their SCA's will light up the colour of the Void and show the following information.

World #398050 is a void nexus known locally as Tshering. As a void nexus this world has strong links with the void and the connection through worlds. World #398050 is home to the Endless River. Legends speak of this river being powerful enough to send thoughts from one heart to another across any distance. All that is needed is for you to know who it is you wish to reach.

On-board

The dressing carriage is open, filled with clothing best suited to a pleasant spring day. Light, airy and in a rainbow of joyful colours and florals. One closet is entirely filled with wide-brimmed hats bedecked with ribbons, feathers and ornaments. A stack of picnic baskets and containers filled with an alarming variety of passenger-suitable foodstuffs and flasked drinks sits in one corner, next to rolls of thick, weatherproof blankets in the four team colours.

The large box marked Do Not Use Yet, filled with small, empty jute bags, is hopefully still sat in the Luggage carriage, ready for passengers to grab handfuls of its contents as directed by the announcement.

Upon landing (after an appropriate countdown), the train remains on the surface, its carriages partially curved to form a gathering site for the day. Welcome to Tshering, the eighth void nexus!

A Day for Picnics

Tshering, system #398050, is a strange place, only habitable by grace of the passengers' SCAs. The sky is shot through with colours, a cascade of sunsets, and through it, the void shimmering through it in seams like a child's painting of the milky way. Still, there's a beauty to the chaotic mash of colours that soaks through its landscape, and in the shelter of the forests of towering funghi that dot its surface, the Void can go unseen by its visitors.

The temperature seems mild, suitable for the provided clothing, and if there are weather patterns around the world they've taken the day off. The funghi are sturdy enough that what air flow there is doesn't disturb their stalks, and carved grooves and holds in some of the larger examples indicate that climbing them to sit atop their glowing crowns is eminently possible, and, in fact, encouraged.

the Endless River

The Endless River is a font of pure chaos, flowing from a multitude of small rivulets across the area to a central reservoir, from which it pours directly upwards, away from Tshering's surface and out of sight, beyond the world's atmosphere.

Anything bagged and placed within the Endless River will also flow upwards and soon be out of sight, passing, presumably, into the Void. Scattered across the surface of Tshering are small, glittering pebbles, as described in the announcement.

The stones are pleasantly cool to the touch, and all passengers need to do is feel. Messages can be in any form that the Voidtreckers wish. Perhaps words, perhaps feelings, perhaps an image from their mind into the stone. Perhaps a mixture. Once they begin their message the stone will glow slightly and continue to glow as they secure it in the bag and cast it into the river. They will feel, almost instinctively, that they need to focus as they do so, thinking of the person they wish to reach all the while.

There are plenty of bags and many more stones; passengers will not be limited in their sendings.

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"Is that so?" She smiles with teasing fondness as she gives him a sideways look. "Okay then, old clunker. Lead the way."

It really is a pretty spot, and Pepper can't help but admire it some more after they've gotten the picnic blanket spread on the ground.

"This is nice." Carefully lowering herself down to take a seat, she motions at the towering mushrooms. "A little weird, with... all this. But nice."

Once they're settled, Tony is at once noticeably restless. As his gaze drifts from their surroundings and settles onto Pepper, his murmur comes low, gentle. "Yeah... beautiful."

A world done up like a peaceful blacklight poster is breathtaking, but he finds a little more serenity closer to home. Regret, or the thin shadow of it, laps like a cool wave beneath his uncharacteristic sentimentality. I really should have pushed for Venice.

Realizing he's gonna look like an idiot being all Sad Puppy at her, Tony turns swiftly to dig through the contents of their picnic basket, removing a few of the flasks, the various food items he hadn't been paying a whole lot of attention to when he packed the thing.

"Sandwich?"

Pepper feels his gaze on her, and like a moth pulled helplessly toward a flame, she tips her head and gets caught in the snare. Tony's eyes have always been expressive, and now they're looking at her like she has the only answer to some question he's desperate to know, backlit with something deeper still. She's seen him display that kind of intensity before, but never directed at her so blatantly. Not until he came back home from Afghanistan a different person. It's like they're back on that dancefloor during the benefit, the moment stretching on, and it catches Pepper in some tender part behind her breastbone-- but it's the sadness that she can glimpse in Tony's dark, dark eyes that really makes her breath catch.

Wetting her lips, she draws a deep breath in once Tony breaks away to rummage through the basket.

"Sounds good. So, what, umh--" She clears her throat delicately, feeling acutely the warmth of a flush blooming on her cheeks she tries to ignore. "What else have we got? Any fruit in there?"

"Fruit?"

Yep, nothing to see here, as he squints at the labels of containers and unearths what appear to be apple slices. Those go passed on to Pepper, while he unstraps plates from the inside lid, and starts arranging everything with a kind of nervously neurotic air.

"Shame there's no wine," he remarks, though it's just that, A Remark, something to fill the quiet. Tony thinks of the wine cellar at home, but names and labels escape him, stuffing a cracker in his mouth and not tasting it, mumbling through a mouthful of crumbling cracked wheat, "Something... white, maybe."

Pepper accepts the little container, their fingers brushing over the exchange in a way that leaves her skin tingling warmly in the wake of their Moment.

"That'd be nice," she agrees just a hint thinly as she nibbles on a slice of apple herself, despite wine probably being the last thing they should introduce to the situation. Pepper hardly misses that nervous energy that laces his every movement, and eventually concern begins to creep back in, overtaking her earlier hesitancy.

"Is everything okay, Tony?" she finally asks point-blank, softly. "You seem... preoccupied."

Or nervous, but that's a bit more diplomatic.

"Huh?" As if on cue, the packet of crackers slip clumsily from his fingertips, scattering its contents across the purple blanket where it lands. Dismay crosses his face, thin-lipped annoyance, and Tony takes only a second of halfhearted effort to scoop them onto a plate before he gives up. He makes as if to reach for her, stills, and commits with silent determination, scooting closer to take her by the hand.

"That thing I needed to tell you like, a week ago..." he begins, haltingly, and quickly adds to reassure her, "It's fine. Now, I mean. It wasn't before, back home when I should have told you then, I just. Still need to say something about it. Here, I mean."

Though Pepper's initial reaction skews more toward confused amusement for a moment as Tony fusses with the unruly crackers, she already has a gut feeling something's up a beat before he scoots closer and takes her hand. Any and all amusement vanishes in an instant, replaced with mounting dread as she stares him with visible concern, clutching his hand tighter with every word.

"Told me what? What's going on, Tony-- you're scaring me."

Tony doesn't quite meet her gaze, focused on their linked hands. He screwed this up once before, stumbling over what to say crossing over with how to say it, and expressing himself so poorly in the end, he hadn't blamed her for disengaging. Easing in a slow breath, sliding his other hand over hers, he makes his approach.

"You know those smoothies I've been downing every day?" Not waiting for her to confirm, Tony sits up straighter and presses on, "They're specifically made to counteract the effects of the palladium slowly leaching into my body. It kept me going, but I still needed to refine the reactor design, with something that didn't have the potential for heavy metal poisoning."

It's so matter of fact in hindsight, calm as he is.

"I tried, for six months, to find it. And I couldn't."

Edited 2021-05-05 15:30 (UTC)

Smoothies? It's not what Pepper had expected him to open with by far. Of course she'd noticed them, it was a rather evident anomaly in Tony's usual diet-- he'd never been overly concerned with getting in his daily dose of greens. But she has no time to be properly perplexed by that, not when Tony's already forging ahead with his tale.

"Pal--" It's just a pitiful ghost of a syllable, the rest choked to death by the sudden vise squeezing around her lungs, stealing her breath. She blanches as the true meaning of his words actually dawns, her hand turning slightly clammy in between the gentle but firm press of Tony's own. No. Surely he can't mean...

"Wh-what exactly are you saying?" She finally forces out, stammering in her growing anxiety, every word sticking to her throat for a second, dread creeping across her paling face.

"That I'm fine now," he blurts out quickly, unable to stand the look on her face, the growing fear he's causing. "I got some help, in the end, and I figured it out and made a new rt, and everything is going to be okay."

It's a rush he recovers from, wetting his lips. If it was only that, though, he'd have let it alone, right? Why delve into it at all if things were set to return to the status quo?

"The reason," he begins slowly, looking up to her, not having cottoned onto the fact that he's stroking her hand with soft, gentle caresses, "The reason I'm telling you this is, ah. Listen, I though that, that I was a goner and... it gave me a lot of time to think about things. And you. Mostly you."

She hadn't realized how tense she was until those words come from Tony's mouth, the strain of the anxiety having drawn her muscles up tight. That tension goes right out of her body with a gusty exhalation of pure relief, shoulders lowering and fingers relaxing their tight grip around his. Everything is going to be okay.

But the relief lasts only for so long. He goes on, and Pepper's mind wanders to all those lingering looks and little smiles exchanged over espresso cups and schedules. Her throat dries up and her pulse flutters, but this time dread is not the cause for it. Well, not the sort of dread that gripped her just a moment ago. Wetting her own lips, she struggles to reply, thrown by the topic and those soft touches of his both. "Tony, I..."

That's as far as she gets, completely uncertain where to go from there. She'd already subtly rejected his ideas of a concerned girlfriend once, before that disaster of a press conference. They shouldn't rock the boat-- she was still his employee, and now he's apparently a superhero of some sort to boot. It's complicated. Is he really pushing for this again? What if it doesn't work out and they only end up ruining what they do have, unable to go back? The thought terrifies her to her core, and yet... she feels a tiny tug in her heart, all the same.

"You've been promoted." It isn't where he meant to go, veering slightly off course. He'll wend his way back, he tells himself firmly but, first, certain things ought to be squared away.

"Back home, a week or so before I showed up here. You said yes, by the way." Tony smiles at last, boyishly, with a measure of smug satisfaction to it. "Didn't take much to convince you, but you were already helming the place, I just made things official."

Pepper blinks, twice, her train of thought brought to screeching halt by the sharp veer in the conversation, gentle trepidation quickly morphing into confusion that gives way to sheer disbelieving bafflement.

"What?" she bursts, face screwing up as she squints at him. "Did you just say-- are you pulling my leg?"

"What? No!" Insistent, he takes her by the shoulders as he had once before, the symmetry of the moment not escaping him.

"As of a couple months ago you, Pepper Potts, were promoted to Chairman and CEO of Stark Industries. And," he adds, dropping his hands to hers again, squeezing them lightly, "That's the second time I've gone through all that, and it feels good to say it. You deserve it."

Pepper's mouth hangs open a little as she works through the news, staring into his eyes, slowly convinced this isn't just one of Tony's jokes. Her? The CEO of Stark Industries? The astonishment on her face turns slowly into happiness and pleasure.

"Me?" she echoes her thoughts through a laugh, but it's no longer incredulous-- more like abashed delight mixing in with lingering surprise, much like it had been when Tony first broke the new to her in the correct timeline. Her grin is wide and it reaches her eyes, sparkling and crinkled at the corners. "I can't believe-- Thank you."

Little aches go pinging through his chest for her grin, in time with the steady beating of his heart. Pepper's smile is everything, the beauty of her joy far eclipsing the planet's loveliness around them. Tony can't hide the affection in his gaze, isn't sure he wants to. Talking about his brush with death just brings it all back, and the intensity of his faith in her, a tenderness he never knew himself capable of.

It's utterly terrifying.

This time, there's no evasion, just an earnest, straightforward warmth, "You've taken care of me for so long, and I'm grateful. I know you'll take care of the company. Let's be honest," because he can't resist, wry, "it'll probably be much less arduous."

Pepper's broad grin tames into a closed-lipped smile, but the emotion expressed isn't any lesser for it; surprised satisfaction turns into warm affection that she doesn't attempt to hide, same as Tony. Gratified as she is to hear all that, she also can't help but begin to connect the dots of this story-- can't help but wonder.

"I'm happy you think so." It's easy to see the gentle speculation beginning to bloom in her expression, though, and she draws her bottom lip between her teeth just for a second before speaking up. "Was it because you thought... you were going to. You know." She swallows a little thickly, unable to even say the word out loud. "But you're okay now, like, one hundred percent-- you said so, right?"

"One hundred percent," he promises, and raps his knuckles lightly over the rt. "Top of the line stuff."

Tony falls silent again, just for a moment, and shakes his head. "Yes and no. I'm not the leader Stark needs, moving forward. Figured I should be more specialized, while we're shifting gears and finding our feet again. CTO's got a nice ring to it."

Pepper draws in another breath through slightly parted lips at the confirmation, relief evident in her eyes and the vise squeezing around her chest disintegrating. He's okay. Everything was okay. Thank god.

"Right." Nodding, she has to admit he makes sense, but at the same time... it's just driving home the fact how everything is changing, probably irrevocably. The look on her face falters a little, her relief slowly drifting further away and thinning out like smoke in the wind.

"So, you're really committed to this Iron Man thing, huh?" She doesn't sound all that enthused; even if she tries to act neutral about it, she can't quite hide the wan expression on her face, nor keep the edge of concern from her quiet tone.

Tony lightly blows a breath out, scrubbing a hand over his face.

"That's the thing, Pepper; it isn't just a 'thing', it's-" Some undefinable emotion crosses his features, a yearning, a seriousness he'd worn when he asked her to break into SI for him. He swallows, and looks at her intently now.

"I want to help people. I want to protect them. I want us to leave behind a legacy that isn't war."

Pepper recognizes that look quite well. She knows he won't be swayed, and it's, frankly, frightening her. Whenever she thinks of this topic now -- this Iron Man and everything it signifies -- that same fear leaks into her veins. What if one day he doesn't come back home? What if it's Afghanistan all over again, just worse? She knows she should be proud, and she is. These new goals are so admirable, considering what Tony's goals in life used to be. But now, all she can think of is the fear of losing him again.

"I understand that. I do." Yet, she avoids his gaze, ostensibly to fiddle with their picnic spread, moving this and unpacking that. Her next words come so softly they're only a notch above inaudible; "But who's gonna protect you?"

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The Endless River

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