[Tony isn't sure what he expects from T'Challa's cryptic communique. Well, okay, he does know what he hopes for, and that's Steve, but the odds of that happening are pretty goddamn low. His letter had made that clear enough, and Tony can't say he's wrong. What he can do, and has been doing, is trying to keep from wallowing (mostly) and pick the pieces of his life up from where they'd splintered apart. They don't all fit back together, but he can't expect them to. He's just got to move on.
Moving on also involves moving out, and when T'Challa's mysterious emissary arrives, he's making the first preparations to have everything in the Tower packed up and shipped upstate. So he doesn't quite pay attention to security like he should (he's sure Friday would let him know if anything needed to be attended to) and instead makes some more notes on the cloaking mechanism for the plane that's got to transport some of the most powerful artifacts on Earth safely to their new home.
(No pressure there.)
He steps into the conference room, clocks the suit first, and then-
Then his fist clenches, clearly visible under the glass of the table, and the muscles of his jaw tighten. He flashes back to the grainy video, the dim light of the television lighting his face in the silo. The stomach-churning truth of what he'd seen, what Steve had hidden from him. He's spent months moving past the blind rage, trying to reason with himself. Trying to accept the truth, that Barnes hadn't been responsible for the murders of his parents.
He'd almost been able to believe it until he looked him in the face again.
No, he tells himself. One finger at a time, he relaxes his hand. Thinks about going to India after this, because he really needs to find some peace and serenity like yesterday. (Thinks about crawling into a bottle, about the entire liquor cabinet waiting upstairs.) Tries to ignore the calculations of velocity of his fist smashing into Barnes's face, the probabilities flashing across his brain of what might happen next. (How much strength it takes to snap one woman's neck with a single twist.)
He's better than this. He has to be better than this, because if he isn't, then what does he have left? Where has he come since that cave in Afghanistan? Maybe he's stuck back at square one, but it's better than ground zero.]
Barnes. [His jaw finally creaks open enough to let him talk, and he feels like the Tin Man in need of oil. Probably not the worst analogy ever.] They offer you anything to drink? [Fall back on the manners drilled into him since childhood. It's civilized, and that's what he needs right now, civility.]
no subject
Moving on also involves moving out, and when T'Challa's mysterious emissary arrives, he's making the first preparations to have everything in the Tower packed up and shipped upstate. So he doesn't quite pay attention to security like he should (he's sure Friday would let him know if anything needed to be attended to) and instead makes some more notes on the cloaking mechanism for the plane that's got to transport some of the most powerful artifacts on Earth safely to their new home.
(No pressure there.)
He steps into the conference room, clocks the suit first, and then-
Then his fist clenches, clearly visible under the glass of the table, and the muscles of his jaw tighten. He flashes back to the grainy video, the dim light of the television lighting his face in the silo. The stomach-churning truth of what he'd seen, what Steve had hidden from him. He's spent months moving past the blind rage, trying to reason with himself. Trying to accept the truth, that Barnes hadn't been responsible for the murders of his parents.
He'd almost been able to believe it until he looked him in the face again.
No, he tells himself. One finger at a time, he relaxes his hand. Thinks about going to India after this, because he really needs to find some peace and serenity like yesterday. (Thinks about crawling into a bottle, about the entire liquor cabinet waiting upstairs.) Tries to ignore the calculations of velocity of his fist smashing into Barnes's face, the probabilities flashing across his brain of what might happen next. (How much strength it takes to snap one woman's neck with a single twist.)
He's better than this. He has to be better than this, because if he isn't, then what does he have left? Where has he come since that cave in Afghanistan? Maybe he's stuck back at square one, but it's better than ground zero.]
Barnes. [His jaw finally creaks open enough to let him talk, and he feels like the Tin Man in need of oil. Probably not the worst analogy ever.] They offer you anything to drink? [Fall back on the manners drilled into him since childhood. It's civilized, and that's what he needs right now, civility.]