lucetilogs | Post-Event Blues

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Post-Event Blues

Who: Everybody, everybody!
What: The battle is won. Now what?
When: The eleventh, twelfth, and onward
Where: Luceti
Summary: With Zompano dead and the cultists routed, Luceti is restored. Kind of.
Rating: F for Feels

On the eleventh, things were slowly breaking down. Memories of their true lives were breaking through. The village, scarred by the battle with the cultists, began to rebuild itself. Community buildings that had vanished were returned to their rightful places. The battle dome was uncovered from the earth that had covered it. Hundreds and hundreds of fake homes slowly faded away. Paved roads gave way to trees and grass. It was an incredible sight for anyone who was willing to sit aroun and watch it happen.

Things wouldn't be easy for the villagers, though. The memories perpetuated by the last ten days would not be easily removed. The feelings and hatreds it had created would take time to conquer and remove. Perhaps, in a way, that was Zompano's nastiest trick of all. The village itself may heal from his invasion, but it would take far more than a few Shifts to fix the people left behind.

Towards the end of the day, their wings returned. Much like some of the buildings, they seemed to just reappear, as if they had never been gone. Their barcodes became visible again as a singular reminder that they were, ultimately, just the property of another entity who as a whole were not much better than Count Zompano.

By the twelfth, the village looked as though nothing had ever happened. Sure, the contents of buildings might have been messed up or destroyed during the battles, but things were otherwise as they were supposed to be. The night before, people would have had to find their old beds to go sleep in, as they no longer possessed the old ones granted to them in another life.

The village was peaceful.

Modly Note: That wraps up the event. As noted in the prose above, you have the option to play up the after effects of the event more than in other ones. While it won't have the same impact universally, the Shift was constructed in such a way that people may have difficulty shaking off the emotions they developed during the event. In effect, it was a cruel send off to Luceti so they would have to deal with the loathing and hatred that came with the less desirable parts of it. Of course, that means the feelings of familial bonds will also persist for awhile as well. It's up to you, as players, to decide how much or little to play with it!

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She remained constant presence at his side, which should be a surprise to no one who knew them. They'd both endured terrible confinements to hospital beds during their time in Luceti, and during each neither left the other except for short breaks. Pepper had in fact been in this very position before, with Tony silent and still for days on end, worrying that he would never wake, never be himself again.

Thankfully the coma doesn't linger so long, but the recovery this time is much slower. Before he'd been out of bed so quickly he'd managed to do so without her notice. This time she was there when he opened his eyes, but his gaze was vacant, empty, and her relief vanished into them. Yet that absence didn't linger, and over the days that followed she saw more of him coming back. He stayed awake longer, started to speak and to listen. He was getting better.

By Friday she'd started to understand where the boundary lay, between pushing him a little further and that line where his frustration grew too great. Of course it would creep under his skin, a genius who could normally process everything around him with ease. But the cultists had struck each of them at their very core, and even fully awake Pepper still had difficulties distinguishing the falsehoods from the truths. She could only imagine how much harder it was for Tony.

So every question she answered as best she could, sometimes more than once if he drifted while she spoke. It forced her to choose in some ways, to think through all the memories and emotions that lingered until she found the ones that were real. And of course she did her best not to show her concerns to him; he didn't need her fears on top of his own. Pepper had to remain steady, stable where he couldn't. So when he woke that day, he'd find her close by, and quick to smile when she noticed he wasn't sleeping.

"Hey. How are you feeling?"

When he woke, his mind came into focus quicker than it had the days previous. He still felt disoriented, out of place, but when she spoke, it didn't take him so long to register her voice. Pepper. That was Pepper. He turned to look at her, a weak smile on his face at the sight of her.

"Better." After a moment, he tacked on, "You know - relatively speaking."

"I'll still take it." Along with each word he spoke. Compared to how he'd been only a few days prior, Tony practically seemed vibrant where he lay. Pepper made her way to his bedside, reaching out to lightly comb her fingers through the hair at his temple. Yet even though he'd only just woken, she knew there were things that they needed to discuss--far too many for her liking.

"Do you know where you are?"

Malibu. Of course they were in Malibu. He almost said it, but he caught sight of the wings on her back and his mind reconfigured that thought.

Luceti. Always Luceti. Never home. He didn't have a home. Or did he call this his home now?

There were other people he wanted to ask about, but he couldn't fetch their names yet and it was easier to stick with her line of questioning than reroute to his own.

"Luceti," he said after a deep breath. "We're in Luceti."

She nods, trying to temper her reaction after that too long pause. What other possibilities had run through his mind during that breath? Though she wondered she didn't ask; better to focus on what was true, she thought, rather than branching out into the number of things that weren't.

"Yeah. We're in Luceti." Not Luceti Valley, and maybe there was some hope to be found in that. She kept the movement of her hand steady, mulling over what she route she should take next. "In the clinic. You've been...out of it, for awhile."

Out of it. He knew that, vaguely, too - this wasn't his first day here. He didn't know how many days it had been, or what had put him here. He didn't hurt. That was good, right? Nothing seemed broken - he wasn't in space, Pepper wasn't there and Elicia was - and nothing appeared to be wrong with him as he glanced down the length of the bed.

"Why?" It was his turn for a question.

That was the question, wasn’t it? So simply asked but the answer held many layers, would force Tony to think through all the things it’s taken Pepper this long to sort out for herself. She pressed her lips together, working over the assorted replies, where they might lead, how he might take them.

It really wasn’t an easy answer at all.

“You were hurt.” Her fingers continued their steady movement, the touch as much a comfort to her as she hoped it would be to him. “It was an accident. You remember who Rogue is; what she can do?”

But he didn't feel hurt. He felt tired, but not hurt. That wasn't right.

Rogue.

The name fell in his mind like a drop in a bucket. There was so much he needed to piece together still. Rogue was Marion's code name. She was an agent of SHIELD, she was his adopted daughter. But there was something wrong with that, because she shared the same face with his secretary. But that's not quite right either, because he remembered a girl, just called Rogue, the one he called family. The one who wore gloves.

He worked through his thoughts, searching for a conclusion with a concentrated look.

"It's okay if you don't just yet. You will." She could tell from the look in his eyes that Tony was trying to do just that, to sort through all the memories floating around in his head to find the one that matched. Or maybe there were too many that did, too many faces that looked exactly the same, and he was trying to find which one of them was right.

She could at least nudge him in the right direction, though. Pepper thought giving him a little more detail would be harmless enough; Tony seemed focused, not frustrated. "You had your...well, I guess you could call it your life energy drained away. She can take all of a person's strength and their memories with a touch. That's what happened."

That was familiar, but like knowledge someone had told him over a telephone, not something he had experienced for himself. He had insisted he wasn't afraid of her, hadn't he? That it didn't matter what she could do because what mattered to him was being closer to her.

He remembered that conversation. One where she'd tried to push him away, and he had insisted she didn't. Insisted she choose happiness and acceptance instead of solitude and rejection. Built on the lynchpin that she hadn't hurt him, despite all they'd been there together. And - god, was all that going to unravel now?

His features tensed as he looked up into Pepper's eyes. "I don't remember what happened."

"It's okay." The same reassurance once more, her voice soothing as she met his gaze. She believed it because she had to; she was a terrible liar, and if she couldn't convince herself then she couldn't convince him. But her smile was gentle, even as she tried to figure out just how to approach what happened. Sorting through the memories wasn't at all an easy task, but Tony was starting from even further back than everyone else.

"She made contact with you somehow. It wouldn't have been anything notable. Just a touch." Nothing at all that would've stood out, if Pepper understood Rogue's powers correctly. "She didn't mean for it to happen. None of us have been ourselves for awhile now. Do you remember Luceti Valley?"

Luceti Valley. "We live there." But that wasn't quite right, and he amended: "Lived." That sounded more familiar; he had already been told this. Luceti Valley was a trick. The whole 50s shebang was a ruse, and he knew that, but he was still having trouble picking apart which pieces belonged to reality and which didn't.

Slowly, an eyebrow lifted. "I had four kids." At least he sounded incredulous about that. But his near-amusement dampened when he began to recall the identities of those children in his mind.

She stiffened momentarily when Tony first replied, but he was quick to correct himself, much to her relief. She nodded because for all intents and purposes he was right. They had lived there for just over a week. During that time the Valley had been just as real as the village they were in now, or their Malibu home.

She grinned a little when he pointed out the number of kids. "Yeah, you did. Two of them were even with me." But that was a hard subject to broach, because Pepper could still feel that agony of knowing she wasn't truly a mother. It had nearly torn her apart in that fake life, and even now she couldn't keep up a smile.

"It wasn't real. Our life in Luceti Valley."

He was strangely surprised to hear that, even though objectively, he knew that was the truth. That life hadn't been real - only a complicated web of lies. Except that it didn't feel that way to Tony, not entirely. He swore there was some truth to it - he just didn't know which parts they were yet.

And that was an awful feeling. Not knowing what reality composed his life.

He grabbed her hand, winding his fingers around hers as he swallowed. "None of it?" He didn't understand. That couldn't be right. His half-let memories argued otherwise.

She shook her head slowly, her fingers tightening around his when he took her hand. "Some things were based on truths. Like us." She held up her left hand, that small smile returning, now paired with a hopeful look in her eye. "We aren't married yet, but we're going to be. You asked me almost a month ago."

Whereas in the false life, they'd been married only a few years shy of twenty. Maybe that'd be some place safe to start. That they loved each other was the one thing they had been able to decide was real, even as so many things broke apart. "Do you remember, Tony? Asking me to marry you?"

His focus snapped away from that strange, false life, because he couldn't remember asking Pepper to marry him that context. He did, however, remember asking her to marry him in a different one, that set them in the middle of their living room on an entirely ordinary day that he never expected to turn out the way it did. That memory was welcome, and he smiled slightly at her ring.

"And it jumped out at me so suddenly I didn't even have a ring. But I worked it out." He couldn't help a conscious look at his own ring finger - he remembered playing with his wedding ring when he was anxious. But that hadn't been real. As she said, they weren't married yet.

"Yeah. You did." Everything about that night and the one that followed a week later, when he gave her the ring she wore, was precious in Pepper's mind. So she was so very glad when he not only remembered, but he smiled as she spoke of it. That was their real life, and in turn what he needed to focus on.

So when he looked to his own left hand, now barren, she gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. "Soon." She remember his habits, the way he twisted and worried his ring to give himself reassurance. It wouldn't be long before he had a real band to do that with. "For right now, though, you have to focus on figuring out which life is real."

He held a deep breath, because that wouldn't be an easy job. There were so many snapshots swimming in his head already, and talking about it was only going to illuminate more. But he wanted the truth; needed it. So he nodded, looking up into her eyes again.

"Sounds like fun. Let's get started."

"It really isn't." Her grin turned dry with that admission, because Pepper had already gone through the process herself--at least in part. Some memories still held a firm grip, and in truth she thought they still might until she ran into people, forced herself to think of who they actually were to her when they spoke.

"Maybe you should start by telling me something you remember?" She was making this up as she went, but thinking through things was what seemed to work for her. Hopefully the same would hold true for him--he would recall something, speak of it, and decide for himself whether it fell as fiction or fact. Pepper would stay with him while he did, help guide the pieces into their proper places, and soothe his frustrations as he worked through the mental blocks. "Anything at all."

Something he remembered. He selected a less-than-pleasant image from his gallery. "I got into an argument with Shikamaru." They had already debunked the offspring myth, and there was a wound there that hadn't yet fully blossomed. But did that mean the whole memory was fake? "About a tax hike. Except that wasn't what it was really about."

And of course, the first thing that came to mind would be one of the most difficult to place: something from the false life that had actually happened. Pepper pressed her lips together in a thin line for a moment, trying to decide just how to broach this.

"They made us think a tax hike had gone through, yes. And I remember you telling me about the argument." His concerns after had very little to do with the repercussions of how their class had Tony vote, but that was something he needed to remember on his own. "What was it about?"

The more he remembered, the more Tony's features tightened. It had been a terrible argument, full of harsh accusations that he had come to regret later. The argument hadn't been about to tax hike at all - it had been about one of Tony's growing fears. That he was a terrible father.

But he wasn't a father at all, what a joke. His fingers tightened around Pepper's as he found his voice again.

"I'm not - I wasn't there for him." That distinction was so important, but it didn't come naturally.

There was another distinction more important still, and Pepper was quick to offer it when she felt how tightly Tony clutched her hand. "That wasn't you, though. That was the person they made you think you were." Because Tony wasn't a father, which was a bitter truth indeed--but that meant it was impossible to say whether he was a good or bad one.

"I've seen how you've grown, Tony. I know better than anyone how much you want to do what's right, especially for the people you love."

They made him think he was that person - but didn't he share so much with that man? He loved the same woman. He ran the same kind of business. He drank the same liquor. He tried to do right by the people he cared about.

Just like she said he did now. But it didn't quite gel, not with the sinking sensation in his stomach. Not with the feeling that he really did care about Shikamaru but had screwed everything up anyway.

He wasn't ready for this.

So he didn't say anything, resting on his excuse to be unresponsive as a fallback. They could talk about this later when all his pistons were firing. He wasn't ready for this.

The best lies were always peppered with truths, weren't they? Pepper thought she had heard someone say that once, and that was what made the shift from one life into another so devastating. Those overlaps, the traits that Pepper Stark and Pepper Potts shared, from who they loved to their hobbies to the gallery she owned in both worlds.

So she understood why he would want to shrink away from it; she really did. But when he fell into silence her heartbeat picked up. He'd been far too silent, staring with vacant eyes into the still room for the past few days.

"Tony?" Her voice held a note of fear, though she tried unsuccessfully to quell it. "Tony, please...say something."

Friday

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