madeofadamantine | OPEN RP POST

[Because his brain works better when his hands are occupied, he has one of his Iron Legion suits dissected in front of him and he's tweaking the delicate pieces beneath the exoskeleton. He doesn't think anything when he hears the elevator doors open behind him except the small prick of awareness in the base of his spine that scatters when her voice follows.

There is a straight three or four seconds where Tony pivots and looks at Isha, condensing his first reaction into a blank and well-guarded look. It's almost like having the genuine part of the conversation with himself in complete silence, bringing up frustration and protest and relief. Circulating through all of these, and then coming back to the sarcasm she already started.]

I'm still working on the Sean Connery model.

[A fraction of a dart in his eyes and he sees her bloodied lip. He stands up.]

Anyway, looks like you were having your own party.

[She wills herself to remain calm and collected, despite the aches in her knuckles and the blood on her lips. Every time he decided to do something on his own, she berated him but never stopped him. How could she? And even when he came back, in an armor that was more silver than red and gold, there was nothing else she could do but help and maybe even continue to berate him gently, if it were bad enough.

Admitting that she worried for him would be a step into dangerous territory for her. She wonders if it's the same for him.

(She's almost sure it's the same for him.)

Isha, if anything, is adept at lying, and most of all, lying to herself. It was instinct for her now. Play the part of immovable and perhaps even uncaring.]

It ended sooner than expected. Hardly mine, though.

[Tony doesn't tell many outright lies, but he knows how to talk his way to what he wants, and build detours from the things he doesn't want to get into. He's quick-witted; so was Isha. When he stumbled into her hacking into SHIELD, it was a game of cat and cat, or some rare predator tracking another one of its kind and baiting its attention.

So many things about her were similar and he still didn't feel like he had her all figured out, which might not be such a good thing in weird, candid moments like this.

He crosses the room in order to wet a clean washcloth in the sink and then comes back.]

So you crashed it, in other words.

Well I certainly wasn't invited, if that's what you mean.

[She could tell him what happened. She could openly admit that again she sifted through SHIELD files and found the missing link she needed to pursue an, at best, a shadow. She could admit that perhaps she wound up a little too deep without help.

With light, quick footing, she steps over another armor, hoping to sprawl on one of the couches as she normally would do. But she had to be careful of it. Underneath her clothing and the very light armor are bruises that threaten to swell further at any given moment.

Isha tosses him a sleek black jump drive.]

I bet you've been looking for this.

[Unassuming as it seems, she went through some level of Hell to get everything on that drive back, and then some other level just to fry everything else in the process.]

[He follows Isha to the couch, and somehow doesn't drop the washcloth, even when he catches the jump drive in his other hand. She's right that he'd been looking for it, him and Bruce and FRIDAY, and there it was. He doesn't know how she got it, or what happened, just that the outcome was resting in his palm. Like an algebraic equation. A clear answer with letters and symbols to interpret and then solve in order to understand the journey.

Tony slips the jump drive into his pocket for safe keeping, closes the rest of the gap between them, and hands her the wet towel for the blood on her lip.]

So you know how you're always telling me not to do something stupid?

[She takes the towel and begins to gently clean off her lips. She can't help but flinch. The cuts sting and burn.

A part of her wants to ignore the question entirely. Yet he stands before her, point blank, and there's no way to turn the conversation. Besides, she didn't need to hear this from him of all people.]

Did you do something stupid while I was gone?

[Her dark eyes focus squarely on him, vaguely defiant and challenging. She's on guard now. She's the cornered, wounded animal looking either for a fight or a way out.

She's a woman half-lost and unsure of herself.]

[He's had enough cuts, scrapes, and other bang-ups even flying around in a protective exoskeleton that Tony feels the wince on a vicarious level. He even feels the irony, but there's enough petulance and grievances on his end that he's still going to talk about it, anyway. Plus he's Iron Man. Not the Pope.

He shrugs.] I was worried about you. [Which causes his eyes to dart as they do when he realizes he said something vulnerable.] ...And you know, a little amiss when people were asking me why we were all trying to accomplish the same thing, but you disappeared.

[Her eyes flicker. There is no immediate answer. I was worried about you. Most of the time she had no one worrying for her, because she either kept them far enough or assured them it would be fine.

Most of the time they believed her.

The admission from him makes her heart skip a beat, and the next slam hard into her sternum. Odd sensation, that.

She sits up properly now.]

Come here.

[Maybe he doesn't believe her because he has all the same tricks: keeping people at an arm's length or behind a barrier made of "I'm all right," and "everything is fine."

He blinks at the request. It's an abrupt break from the sarcasm he was expecting, or Isha striking back at him, since she's never been quiet about someone else telling her what to do.

But he does what she tells him to do, slowly coming over to the couch and standing in front of her.]

[Some bizarre part of her is sure that she owes him at least this, some grain of truth, because he won't leave it, and the rest won't leave it. It'll become one long, tedious game, and this is one game that she isn't keen on playing.

Her dark eyes give him a measured, cool gaze. They said thieves had honor, but it's only to give themselves an excuse as to why the did or didn't do something. What this is isn't an honor code.

It's a debt to his emotions that must be paid in kind. The scales never much cared for how they were balanced, as long as it was achieved.

Or so she rationalizes.]

You can ask one question, and you will get one answer. I promise you that.

[And he should know that she doesn't take her promises lightly. Rarely does she offer them, if at all.]

[Tony isn't sure he follows the process that led to Isha inviting him to question her, like an all-seeing mythological figure that he climbed a series of steps in a mountain to get to. But he still knows what he wants to ask, even without being prepared for this particular turn of conversation. It surfaces in the silence: clear and effortless.

It still takes him a few seconds to ask. She says he'll get one answer, but she doesn't promise that the question won't backfire on the two of them (which she couldn't, in any honest capacity). He tries to think of something else, for a brief moment, but he's assessing all the possible outcomes that he can think of, when he finally wets his lips and asks what he wants to ask:]

What are you so afraid of?

[When it comes to working with the Avengers on a common goal, or at least telling him or someone else what she had planned when she went looking for the data.]

[She hums softly in thought. The logic wasn't for him to understand. It didn't matter. She understood it.

And she wanted to be rid of it. The longer it remained, the thinner it stretched until it turned too tense.

What is she afraid of? Isha is not a particularly fearful person. Heights, dogs, clowns, none of that was a parasite to her mind.

What is she so afraid of?

The endlessness of it all. The cycles that could never break once they begin.

The weakness in her character.]

Blood begets blood. I am not like you. I have no armor. No training. No serum. I'm a thief from the broken streets of London that had nothing for too long. All I have is me, and the reputation that precedes me.

[Her eyes flicker. Isha built herself into this over the course of her life. This greater-than-life figure, this anarchist, this thief, this freedom-fighter, this blackmailer. No one knew her, except for what they wanted her to be. She could not afford anything or anyone to break this. It would be the end of her.]

The ones you love can hurt you the most. You have great, overt enemies. I have insidious ones. I can't have that blood on my hands. It would never end.

[And she knows it wouldn't because she would do the same if anyone dared to cross her or anyone she knew.]

Not all of them are obvious.

[He could be referring to Obadiah Stane, who kept his intentions hidden up until the point that he was digging the arc reactor from his chest. But they also had to sever HYDRA from SHIELD's belly like a Nazi tapeworm, very recently.

Tony crouches, balancing his weight on the balls of his ankles, and looking up at Isha.]

You still don't have to go through this lone wolf-thing. Though I'm probably the least qualified person in the world to say this...or maybe I am. If we're talking reputation, I'm the mass-murderer trying to save the world. ...But going at it without anyone, or shutting people out, from now on, whatever you're talking about, it's not worse than the alternative.

[Her eyes don't meet his, though her head is in his direction. She came to give him the files, not to undergo this.

It was always the same, though. It starts one way, and it ends like this.

Her eyes drift to her hands, bruised and covered and scabs. She's not sure still how she made it out alive. All she knows is that there was blood and the world was a blur.]

Alone is what I know.

[Even if some part of her doesn't want to be alone. Maybe that's the real reason she came. She could've left the files somewhere for JARVIS to deal with them.]

OPEN RP POST

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