Tony's Secret Lab, Abandoned Warehouse District, Wednesday Evening

[dollpocalypse]

Topher flung the door open with more force than he'd ever realized he was capable of, his heart pounding. That was partially from having run all the way here while crying, though the helpless grief and rage battling inside him was also a close second. He couldn't remember ever feeling like this before -- like he'd just lost something completely irreplacable and there was nothing he could do. He couldn't fix it with science or programming or anything without at least a scan of Tony's brain and a wildly undeserved medical degree. It was just... just the worst thing ever.

He kicked the floor, and then, finding that unhelpful, threw the phone and that stupid orb he was still holding onto the ground and hurled a hard punch at the wall.

Fuck, that hurt.

But it did kill some of the helpless feeling, at least. Now there was just... grief.

With a choked sob, Topher collapsed down to the floor with his back to the wall, cradling his bleeding hand and just hating everything.

[[I'M SORRY. HE JUST HAS A LOT OF FEELINGS. for two, and NFB.]]

Comments

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

Okay, so maybe patrolling the island wasn't the smartest thing to do, but arguably neither was being anywhere outdoors in Gotham City after dark. Or near dark. Or most of the time at all.

Look, at least Robin wasn't poking at the cloud, unlike some people.

Still, information or the lack thereof had been gathered, and she wanted a point of comparison, so -- still in costume -- she let herself into Tony's lab.

"Hello, the super-secret high-tech headquarters! This is not your friendly neighborhood pizza delivery guy, but at least I have the friendly part down!"

[wwiii]

Warren had been hanging out here since... well...

Since he'd decided that accidentally bumping into certain persons in the dorms would be a bad idea, and Tony had been nice enough to offer him a place to hunker down and hide. What he hadn't really been expecting was the flying phone and the crack of knuckles against wall, and...

"Hey...?"

It sounded like somebody was having a day that was kind of like his month.

[dollpocalypse]

Hi, Robin. Welcome to the saddest lab ever. Currently occupied by a crying Topher and a Warren who was probably doing something else.

Topher lifted his head up for long enough to see that someone was at the door, then swiped impatiently at his wet face in an effort to, you know, see. "What do you want?" he managed, his voice coming out raspy and miserable.

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

"I thought I'd come check in on Tony," she answered, eyes narrowing slightly in a hard to see through the mask way. "Assuming he's not out there poking at the weird cloud . . ."

Sadly, she knew him a little too well.

[dollpocalypse]

Topher... had not expected to be spoken to.

He looked up, made out a blurry winged figure through vision that was compromised due to tears, and choked out, "Hey."

Oh god, he hated today.

[dollpocalypse]

And now there was sobbing. Thank you, Robin.

"Get out!" Topher yelled, hurling his phone in her general direction. (Good thing he couldn't really aim.) "He's not here, he's not anywhere, just get the fuck out."

[wwiii]

You know, for all that Warren didn't care for being poked at, a crying Topher had a funny way of kind of tugging at his heartstrings. Go figure.

"You... hit your hand pretty hard, there," he ventured, making his way over and crouching down nearby. "What's up?"

He could guess.

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

Robin didn't have to duck out of the way, which was a good thing, because she stopped cold when she heard what he was yelling.

"Oh, like hell I will." She took a step toward him instead, not cracking her knuckles although there was some finger-flexing going on. "If you know something about where he is, I highly suggest you share those little tidbits of information with me."

There were reasons Bruce said her persuasion skills needed work.

[dollpocalypse]

"I don't wanna talk about it," Topher mumbled, screwing up his face as more tears threatened to fall.

And it wasn't like there was one person -- maybe two -- in the whole world who had the potential to trigger this kind of response from him, or anything.

[dollpocalypse]

"He's not here!" Topher yelled, getting to his feet now. "Just go away!"

And somewhere in Kennedy's dimension, Dawn Summers was being outwhined.

[wwiii]

Yeah. If it wasn't Tony, it was Peter, Warren figured. He wasn't going to pry too deeply. Not if Topher didn't feel up to talking.

Was it bad that he was hoping it was Peter? Selfishly so, granted. Tony was... one of the last friends he had left in the world, really. So.

He made a reach for Topher's hand. After the punch he'd given the wall, he wouldn't be surprised if he'd managed to do some pretty serious harm to his knuckles, and if he wasn't going to talk, the least he could do would be a little first-aid.

"Then you don't have to talk," he promised, softly. "Can I see?"

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

"If he's not here," and now Robin's voice was going not quite low and dangerous but closer to that than it had been, "it might be in your best interest as much as mine to be a little more specific than that."

She was learning some interesting new interrogation techniques! She just didn't think she should use them on Tony's friends.

You know. Unless she had conclusive proof that he was evil.

[dollpocalypse]

Topher swallowed, then stuck out his hand and managed quietly, "Yeah."

Finally, ducking his head to avoid eye contact as Warren went for his hand, he near-whispered, "It's Tony."

[dollpocalypse]

"I don't even know you! I don't know who you are or whether you're some kind of, of, of supervillain trying to kill him, but you can't, so just -- just -- "

Aaaaaand back to sobbing. Someone had a really great hold over his emotions. Or... really not at all.

[wwiii]

Warren swallowed a lump in his own throat at that, one of his hands balling into a fist tight enough for his claws to break skin.

Tony. He'd been afraid of that.

"... How...?"

He turned Topher's hand over carefully in his own, in the one that wasn't bleeding, and he exhaled. Oh, that was bad. His eyebrows furrowed a little, and then he covered Topher's knuckles with the palm of his other hand, the one that was bleeding, and just held it there. Held it there like some weird mutant with a freaky healing factor, who happened to be bleeding anyhow.

God damn it, Tony.

[dollpocalypse]

Topher stared down and watched Warren work. It was easier than looking up at his face, anyway, even if looking down meant looking at blood and it was gross and there were stupid tears splashing down on his hand like he was some kind of girl or something...

"He, um." Topher cleared his throat. "He was trying to fix... you know. It."

The multiverse. You know. As you do.

"And he touched the, um, the weird cloud thing. And just... disappeared."

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

"Oh, for --" Robin slapped a gloved hand loudly over her face and sighed.

"It would," she intoned, looking up at the ceiling and not actually caring that this wasn't really her head voice, "be entirely too cliché of me to smack him in the face and yell 'GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF, MAN?' Wouldn't it?"

[wwiii]

"Just by touching it?"

Okay. So keeping their distance was absolutely mandatory. Good to know.

Warren pulled his hand away for a moment to see if his blood was doing Topher's hand any good. His own palm had already healed, and after a moment's consideration, he pressed his claws into his own skin, and then covered Topher's knuckles again. This time should do it, he figured.

"We'll get him back, you know."

[dollpocalypse]

"Yeah. Just touching it."

Topher watched his hand heal, feeling... surprisingly numb about it. Warren's blood had just fixed his hand through some kind of awesome mutant powers, and Topher couldn't bring himself to be a nerd about it.

"He was gonna fix everything," he said softly, still staring down. "We can't just get him back. No one else knows how."

Inappropriate pedestal-putting-on, thy name was Brink.

[dollpocalypse]

That was enough to get him to at least be a little more quiet about the sobbing, actually.

Frustrated and not really aware enough to grasp the cliché, Topher demanded, "What are you even -- what are you even talking about?!"

[wwiii]

"I know it'll take more than a couple of us to live up to Tony Stark," Warren offered, managing to keep his tone level in spite of the somewhat wry words he was speaking, "but... I think it can be done. There happen to be more than a few of us left. And it isn't like reality hasn't broken around here before, even before Tony was a student here."

... Rapture. Warren suppressed a shudder as he re-claimed his hand.

"People just have to stay safe long enough to figure it out. And then we'll get Tony back, and everyone's homes, and... everything."

The false bravado was pretty much the only thing keeping Warren from suffering a complete psychotic break, yes.

[batwaffles.livejournal.com]

Robin sighed and crossed her arms, tapping one foot in an overly obvious way.

"An explanation? For the melodramatics? It'd be nice."

Then, less certainly, and with genuine concern:

"If something's happened to him, I want to know."

[dollpocalypse]

"No, we won't," mumbled Topher, the voice of optimism. "Nothing's ever gonna be good anymore 'cause he's not here anymore and everything sucks and -- and -- I should've gotten eaten by whatever it was instead, 'cause he's the only one on this whole stupid planet who can do anything useful and he didn't even like me anyway."

You're welcome, Warren.

[dollpocalypse]

"I don't even know if you're his friend!" Topher yelled. "I'm not just gonna, gonna give out his information to some random stupid nosy stranger in a stupid fucking costume."

[wwiii]

This was going well.

"You're giving up? Just like that?" Warren's brow furrowed a little bit. "Instead of trying to save him, or any of it? I mean, if there's any one person who won't stay down for the count, it's Tony. I'd give him, like, a week tops before he's beating that big dark void right in its stupid face from the inside, you know."

Just keep sounding confident. Keep sounding sure of this. Even if Warren didn't feel it for an instant. Even if he didn't believe it in the least. Maybe it was what Topher needed to hear. Tony was invincible. Tony could do no wrong.

"Maybe he's not even gone, you know. Maybe he's just somewhere else. I mean, what do Auditors do? Normal ones, you know? When they take something, they don't make it disappear. They put it in the bank. They hold on to it. What would the point be in destroying it all?"

He didn't believe that, either. But at least the logic was sound.