Logs:Go Home Again

Go Home Again
Dramatis Personae DJ, Tony
In Absentia Egg	2024-10-23 "Did you know?"
Location <ME> Little Moose Mountain
People usually come here for hiking, for camping, for fishing, for enjoying the sprawling miles of old-growth forest lush and extensive on the mountainside. Right here in this small section it's not all that scenic and definitely not relaxing -- a perimeter has been set up far around where theoretically civilians should not be crossing, stern SHIELD agents guarding the lot. Inside the forest is -- different. Kind of bleak, kind of dead, kind of twisted into strange jagged and dangerous configurations. A few of the trees look distressingly like they're growing woody clawed humanoid limbs, a few of them, if you take your eyes off them too long, are not staying put. Somewhere in the center, contained in a complicated looking case and tented off and being thoroughly investigated by the team of scientists here, is the extremely innocuous-looking gizmo probably responsible for the mess. Tony (one arm heavily bandaged where he's recently had to be hastily and violently removed from the grip of a tree before it finished absorbing him) is at a small distance from the alien thing. He's on his phone, engaged in some discussion of acquisitions that sounds both heated and intensely tedious. There's a blur whizzing past the guards, through the perimeter, to the Definitely Don't Enter Here tent. It's too fast to easily track, ghostly shape there and gone before any alarm bells have gone off. Tony's gone with it, though, vanished in a flash that might be more properly alarming to someone, but that's a problem for later. They're well out of sight or sound of the SHIELD outpost only a few seconds later when DJ sets the older man down -- the outcropping of rock he's landed them on is breathtaking, a beautiful view of the autumn forest laid out wide around them. DJ himself is a less lovely sight, disheveled, clothes stained with dirt and blood -- hard to tell, at the moment, if any of it is his but he looks exhausted and pale and a little jittery. He's not wearing his prosthetic arm, and his other curls around his chest, picking at the torn fabric of the empty hanging sleeve of his button-down. There's no context, no preamble, just a wild-eyed breathless: "You could find it." A few seconds is enough for Tony to entirely lose his composure and only halfway regain it. He's stumbling away from the whirlwind trip, phone dropping from his hand to crack against the rock. He rakes fingers through his hair, settling it partway back into place before picking the phone back up: "-- No, just a little -- connection. Issue. Go ahead. Make the deal, I'll -- call you." With the phone call ended he is now grimacing at his broken screen. "We've invented these devices --" he's waggling the damaged phone lazily in DJ's direction. "-- Bad example. This one's broken. But a lot of people find them -- very useful." DJ frowns. Sharp, as though somehow Tony is the one being inconvenient here and interrupting his day with Some Nonsense. "I have a phone -- this is --" He scrunches his hand through his hair, too, but leaves it only far more disheveled even than it began. "Someone else came through. From home." Tony's eyes snap up from the phone screen. His brows lift. "What? No. No, we monitored every -- all the. We would have seen --" And then, just: "Who?" "Not then." There's an impatient edge to DJ's voice. He's returned to picking at the ragged tear in his sleeve. "Not Staten Island. This summer. In Genosha. Another rift." "Huh." Tony is flicking at his screen, now. Brushing stray sharp slivers of cracked glass off the phone, then brushing glittery shards off his fingertip. "Nice beaches there." DJ's fingers curl scrunched and hard at his shirt sleeve. His arm tightens. He turns a wide-eyed look up to the sky, out to the mountains, anywhere else than the annoyance who (through no fault of his own) he is alone here with. "... did you know?" he finally asks, and it's lower now, more controlled. "Please. Haven't been to Genosha since last summer at least. Who's, ah, the newbie? Anyone I..." Tony is giving up on the phone for now, giving it one last wipe against his jeans and then pocketing it. "... should worry about." "No, not --" The frustration in DJ's voice is shifting. It's less sharp and more tired, now, some inward struggle and he presses his palm to his head as if he could through physical pressure slow his racing thoughts enough to sift them out into something more coherent. "There's so many worlds. The chances of a door opening back to ours must be -- did you know it could happen? Was happening? You're tracking these things, Tony." His hand falls heavily back to his side. "Did you know we could get home." "This is home," Tony answers immediately. "Made that choice. Just gotta make it a good one." DJ's eyes narrow. His fingers are twitching, small but definite, against the flap of the pouch that always sits at his belt. Steadier, quieter: "Did you know?" Tony's eyes stray briefly to that twitch. He turns aside, his suddenly avoidant gaze half an answer in itself. The other half comes more slowly. "The energy that creates these tunnels has a particular signature. Leaves a particular signature. Pass through one, you get some of that on you -- numbers seem to show an affinity there. Go through a rift once, it's more likely another will pull you in. Open nearby you. The more you go, the more likely..." His mouth pulls to the side. "Haven't seen a door back there. Yet. But figured chances were high that connection works for worlds, too. Tear a hole once -- seams there get weaker, energy gets stronger. Could be like -- treading a path, over time." "Could be. Have you -- tried, do you --" DJ's steadiness is rapidly shedding, tipping back into a more frantic cadence and a more tense stance. "You brought those people back from wherever, you must -- you know how to open them." Tony's jaw tenses. He doesn't say anything at all. "How to aim them?" DJ steps closer -- his hand lifting to grip, to fist up tight into the other man's shirt, but a moment later he catches himself with a deep flush of shame. He blips back, wraps his arm back hard against his chest. "Tony, please --" He swallows. "Do you?" "In -- theory. With the right data. Right analysis. Right coordinates. Could -- possibly be done." Tony has gone very tense when DJ grabbed him, and isn't quite losing that wariness. He is turning, slowly, back to face the other man, extremely watchful for all the futility of alertness here. "You know what you left. You know how you left. Do you -- what do you really think is waiting for you back there?" DJ pulls in a ragged breath, and lets it out again shakily. The rest of him is shaking, too -- anger, overexertion, hypoglycemia, who knows; his hand is trembling where it's squeezing at his opposite shoulder. "Ss --" Quiet, head hung, this has the overture of an apology that doesn't form. When he steps in again it's just to clap a hand to Tony's shoulder; the world blurs back into its sickening motion, and when Tony is deposited again in the (a little panicked, a little alarm-ing) SHIELD outpost, DJ is gone.