thearena | A constellation of tears on your lashes

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A constellation of tears on your lashes

Who| Aang and Tony and anyone who may be with Tony (Thor, Bucky, etc)
What| Aang is officially outside of what's intended to be the arena. He is going to do his damndest to tear this shit down.
Where| The crawlspace above the third floor.
When| Early Week
Warnings/Notes| Sad little boys and Tony instructing said boys how to use explosives.

Aang has cried a lot. Cried with grief, cried with frustration, cried with loneliness. He feels like he's cried a hundred years' worth of tears.

Making up for lost time, he guesses.

But tears do nothing. After the tearing feeling in his chest has reduced to a dull ache, he gets to work. He already broke through the skylight, so he investigates. Paws around, just in case there are fancy wires or the kind of green ridged chips found in the floor cleaners. He finds nothing but dust, and he feels the electricity above him, crackling the air like Azula does before a strike. He knows that feeling. He died to that feeling, before Katara pulled him back. He misses Katara.

He doesn't know how to deal with electricity, but he knows there are others who do. He zips open his backpack, pulling out pages he had yet to use for drawing or paper gliders, and writes. He writes his note in the best code he can possibly manage, asking for help and explaining the situation.

Then he folds them into the best gliders he can and throws them through the skylight.

Maybe someone will find them.

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He sits like a gargoyle, watching the third floor through the skylight, wishing his ears were still working and curiously pawing at a sponsor gift he'd gotten--lots of bags of multicolored rubber. He is still figuring out what he's supposed to do with them.

Even with everything that's happened, Tony still keeps close to the Avengers store, even though it still has half a car in it. Mostly because he knew it was safe and being on the third level it gave him a better vantage point.

While rummaging around he found one of the paper gliders, he looks over the code idly before just stuffing it in his pocket and continuing to rummage a little while longer before giving up, there was nothing left.

Sitting against the SUV, Tony pulls out the coded note and reads it again. He figures out the code within fifteen minutes, it's almost like a kid wrote it with how easy it was to decode. He goes into the store to find a pen and notebook writes his own note back, not bothering with a code.

You know, that wasn't the hardest of codes to crack. What kind of help are we talking about here?

He folds it up carefully into his own paper plane, looking more like a paper fighter jet, before sending it out and up toward the person who sent the initial glider.

A little hand whips out and grabs the glider mid-flight, pulling it into the skylight before any details could be made out.

Soon enough, another glider gracefully flies from the skylight, landing just at Tony's feet, like it was intended to.

At least I tried. And here, there is a little drawing of a frowning face. Cut him some slack, Tony!

Make the electricity go away from the dome. Or destroy it somehow. Maybe we can get out.

Tony gets comfortable when he sees a new plan coming back to him, whatever he's just replied to it's going to be an actual conversation.

That's going to need one hell of an explosive charge. I don't know about you but I don't have that much C4 in my back pocket.

Or any.

Then he looks at the car.

But we have a whole lot of flammable things.

And back up it goes. Tony wasn't really planning to cut the writer any slack but at least he was still happy to talk to him.

I don't know how explosives work, but I can follow instructions.

If you know what to get and tell me how to put it together, I can do that up here. I'm probably one of the only people who can work up here without electrocuting myself.

He throws the glider down again.

All that tells me is that either you're a kid who's really good at operation, or covering in rubber.

Following instructions is great and all, but that doesn't really give me too much of a reason to trust you, at least not with explosives.

Tony sends back as he starts rearranging the previous notes sent to him into little paper boxes.

The next message comes quickly.

I'm a kid. I don't know what operations have to do with it.

My name is Aang. What can I do to get you to trust me?

Just operation, it's a game.

Well, you can stop hiding away like a baby bird or raccoon.

When the little hand catches the last message, there's a silent pause. Then a little boy with arrows tattooed on his body and a little bit of black fuzz beginning to grow on his head dangles himself from the edge of the skylight, hooking his legs on the edge and allowing his thighs to support all his weight as he hangs upside down and waves. He's either very light, or his thighs are very strong. Or both.

"Does this work?"

"Well, that's. A look." He says as he cranes his head up to look at him. He raises a slight eyebrow at him.

"So, Cirque du Soleil?"

Tony likes to consider himself pretty flexible. For a man his age. But that isn't exactly Tony could do for and real length of time. At least not without feeling really old.

The boy, for his part, looks like he has absolutely no problem with this, even as his face flushes from the blood rushing to it. He gives Tony a smile, his eyes bright even though he's covered in bruises and his chest is bandaged.

"Sorry, I couldn't hear that." He gestures to his ears, his smile becoming sheepish. "Those alarms hurt my ears. Do you mind writing that down?"

Tony shook his head and then after writing on a sheet of paper he shows to the boy.

Come down here, you're cramping my neck.

Aang frowns at the paper. Then he gestures for Tony to turn it upside down. He can't read right side up when his head is dangling like this.

Once he reads the message, he nods in understanding, then begins to swing forward and back, building momentum before he pushes off the edge of the skylight with his legs and somersaults in the air before landing on his feet, completely no worse for wear.

Yes. Yes, the child belongs in the circus.

He's immediately straight up, stretching his arms and back. "It's pretty cramped up there."

With a put upon noise he knows the boy wouldn't hear he did infact flip the paper for him to read.

Though he was quietly impressed at him landing easily on the floor.

"Yeah, you're tiny and saying that?"

He raises an eyebrow then realises he can't be heard then just writes, Yeah I bet. How long have you been up there?

Aang leans in to look at the message, seemingly completely off guard despite the fact he's keeping a careful eye on the man's movements and straining to sense any other unfamiliar presences, just in case he was lured to the ground for a trap.

"Since the blackout. I used my time to break the skylight, and I was looking around for wires and stuff like that. I only found a lot of dust and an electric dome above us." He had been a little disappointed by that, but maybe it's for the best. He, after all, has no idea how wires and green chips and doo-dads work. He only recently learned what an electric wire was. "Do you think you can help me break the dome?"

"If there's one thing I know how to work with, it's electricity."

He writes down what he says, then walks around the boy to get a better look at where he came from. Trying to sort out in his head what kind of factors they would be facing.

"Well, there's no way we're going to have the resources to take out the dome completely, but we might be able to disable a section of it, because there's no way it will run on a single circuit like christmas lights. Everything's going to be running separately. So it's less a matter of how to hit it knowing where best to hit."

How far can you get in there?

It's clear from his face that not only is Tony finding this a challenge but it's the most he's actually been able to do since... Coming here really.

Aang balances on one foot to write on his thigh, drawing a little diagram of the crawl space and using a few stick figures and lines to represent himself and how far he can safely crawl.

It looks like he can at the very least reach his hand into the most narrow parts, and the rest of the time he can be on his stomach or sitting up comfortably.

Once he's done with the diagram, he shows it to Tony. "About that far."

"You're five feet away from a car, and you draw on your leg." Tony gives a slight huff before taking the paper off him to look at what he was drawn. He looks back up at where Aang came from then opens up the SUV to look at how much fuel is in the car before looking back at the drawing and then a think.

"Yeah, we could do th-" He clears his throat and writes down that they could certainly give it a try.

Aang doesn't trust the car. It made him deaf.

He grinned at the message, bouncing on the balls of his feet before looking up at Tony again. "Great! Just tell me what I need to do!"

He pauses for a second. "You never told me your name. Do you mind writing it down?"

Tony writes his name for the kid then after showing it to him he starts to write down everything that needs to be done to make an attempt on the barrier. Muttering to himself as he works because he's always worked better thinking outloud.

Eventually, even with all his concentration, Aang's hands start to hurt and his head starts to pound from working so hard in the relative darkness of the crawlspace.

"I'm taking a break. Look out below!"

Then he jumps out of the skylight. He should break something on impact, but he gracefully lands on the floor, bounces back up, and then sits on the hood of the car, stretching his arms above his head and blinking blearily in the light.

When Aang descends from the ceiling Bucky is sat with his back to the SUV, staring silently across the third floor.

Thanks to the child's warning he doesn't flinch or react to the sound of his landing, registering the sound of the impact as appropriate to one of Aang's size and weight. He knows who it is, he knows he is safe.

In his fingers a knife is flipped over and over, repetitive soothing motion, meant to keep his thoughts at bay.

It's only semi-working.

It doesn't take a genius to see that Bucky is upset. His face is harder than usual, and he keeps playing with that knife. It's unsettling.

After Aang stretches out, cracking his joints as he goes, he shakes himself off and glances around at the man's back with a concerned expression.

Then he wanders away. Not too far, easily still in shouting distance. He just grabs some papers and markers from the nearest store, which is full of foam weapons and action figures of men he doesn't recognize. Then he wanders back, walking barefoot on the ground and idly paying attention just in case he can feel the vibrations of an approaching attacker.

He approaches Bucky slowly, making sure to give him lots of personal space. Aang trusts the man, but he still looks tense and that knife looks pointy.

"I should probably thank you again for saving my life." Aang holds out the paper and markers. It's the only way people can communicate with him, now.

(He wonders if it will be like that forever.)

"I owe you one." He looks down at the knife, twirling between Bucky's fingers. "How long have you worked with knives?"

Bucky did not escape the alarms unscathed either, his hearing is damaged but not so substantially as Aang's. He can still hear though it is distorted. It had been an unpleasant thing to get used to, almost as bad as enduring the noise which caused it, as his balance had been thrown off as well.

He looks up as Aang approaches him with paper and marker, understands what he is meant to do with them and reaches out obediently. The cybernetic arm works better now, thanks to Tony's tinkering.

It takes him a moment to think what to write, he wonders when the last time was that he ever wrote anything down. A long time.

But when he does he finds that it is easier than talking is at the moment.

You don't have to thank me. he paused. I think since the war. all soldier's should know to use a knife, perhaps not as expertly or in the ways he did now, but he was certain that man had been able to use one in combat then.

Aang waits patiently for Bucky to give him a response. He's not in any rush. It just feels nice to stand up and stretch.

"Can you show me how to flip it around like that? I don't think I've ever really tried fighting with a knife."

He could probably manage it, but it's far too easy to kill someone with a blade for any Air Nomad to be comfortable with it, so it's not really a weapon taught to little airbenders. But he's curious, and it looks like Bucky could use a distraction.

To be frank, Aang could use one too.

Bucky considers this proposition for a moment, no it's a question, a request. Something he can refuse if he wishes to.

He doesn't refuse because he needs the distraction, Aang read him right, he needs something to do, some way to be useful. He'd already failed in the worst possible way, there was nothing more terrible he could do.

Teaching a child like this, skinny but whip-quick, small but with strong spirit, to wield a knife doesn't seem like a poor idea to him. Bucky doesn't need to write his answer, he just nods, picks up the blade he was flipping and offers it out to Aang hilt first.

When it is taken he pulls out another, pausing to write, Copy me. and doing the motion he was doing before but much slower.

Aang nods, watching Bucky for a few seconds before tentatively beginning to copy him. Aang's fingers are quicker and more nimble than most people's, so he's well suited to the task, but he still goes slowly, giving the blade the respect it deserves (like Jeong Jeong would want). He'd rather not slice his palm open.

"Like this?"

He's being too cautious with it. Too careful to keep it away from his skin that he might fumble and cut himself because of it. It's similar to his approach to firebending.

Bucky would rather not see Aang cut himself open but as he observes the nimbleness of Aang's fingers, his dexterity and natural grace he quickly gauges the unnecessary caution.

Setting down his knife he writes again.

Don't be afraid of it. It is your weapon, it is a part of you when you wield it. he understand this, how necessary it was to truly wield a weapon with skill. You did not fear the gun when you pulled the trigger, nor the knife when you threw it. Fear made you fumble and hesitate, it was not necessary, it should not be allowed.

He understands the principle of all weapons simply being an extension of the body, but blades make him nervous, and that nervousness makes the weapon less of a limb and more of a bad prosthetic.

Nonetheless, he nods, concentrating on the knife and imagining for a moment that it's a pen. That makes it easier to flip it from hand to hand. His movements are still cautious, but it's the sort of caution that will go away with experience.

"Better?"

Bucky nods again.

It's better, though not perfect. Confidence can come in time though, it is not like his handlers, the men who expected perfection in hours. He remembers the feeling of his own training, againagainagain--doitagainbetter and the way anything less than exemplary was punished -- but he won't do that to Aang, he won't be like them.

Always practice. he writes next.

Aang nods with a smile. He can do that. He keeps flipping the knife around his fingers, gradually getting more comfortable with the blade.

"Who taught you how to do this?" It's an innocent question, and he doesn't intend to pry. It's just something that naturally comes to him, especially since he knows so little about Bucky and his world. Friends should know more about each other.

(Although he has strategically not mentioned the whole 'destined to save the world and also last of his kind' thing. Maybe knowing about each other is overrated.)

I do not remember.

Bucky answers at first, honestly. He doesn't know exactly who it was, not who initially instructed him in the way of using a knife in the war, nor in HYDRA's control...

I was with an organisation, they taught me many things.

His hand stays steady as he writes it a sloping scrawl, his fingers remembering how to do it when his mind does not. This was, he thinks, the way James Barnes wrote once upon a time.

Aang looks over the sloped script, noticing the distinctiveness, the messiness that would have been trained out of him under a professional scribe. It's odd that he wouldn't remember a master of his, but it wouldn't be the weirdest thing Aang's heard.

"Was it like a temple? Or a school? I went to school once, but it didn't really work out for me." Mostly because it was in enemy territory and he decided to teach kids how to dance.

No. he writes first, then pauses in writing further.

What does he say about them? About HYDRA? What does he tell this child about an organisation whose goal had been nothing short of taking the world in hand with all the people in it. Who eschewed free will in favour of absolute subjugation.

The marker lingers above the paper for a good thirty seconds.

They were bad. They wanted to control people.

Aang's smile fades a little bit. They were bad. That can mean a lot of things, but he knows that face. It's the face of an adult who's trying to soften the truth for younger ears. Or eyes, as it were.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to pry."

He doesn't know what has made Bucky so hard-faced. He's probably done bad things in the past. But haven't they all?

He looks down at the knife, still twirling in his hands. He wonders if Bucky's ever had a good experience with a sifu. Every master is different, all the teaching experiences varied, but Aang's always found the relationship between a student and sifu to be an intimate and important one. He can't help but think it's sad that someone wouldn't have that.

He looks back up at Bucky, and impulsively says, "I can show you some of the things the monks taught me once we're out of here. It's not as useful if you're not an airbender, but it's still a new way to move around if you're trying to keep from getting hurt."

It isn't something Bucky really needs. Aang has seen the way he moves, how he pays such close attention to his surroundings. He doesn't need Air Nomad tactics to stay alive. Still, diversity in movement and fighting is always good--that's where the Avatar gets its power--and maybe it'll be just one thing that he would remember learning.

Bucky shakes his head. He doesn't feel like Aang pried, prying would happen if he tried to push deeper now for information.

But to his relief Aang simply backs off and changes the topic. He doesn't want to talk about HYDRA or the things they made them do. If he was asked Bucky isn't sure he could refuse and then... then he doesn't know, but he might lose whatever this relationship is when the boy learns the truth.

It occurs to him this might be considered selfish but it doesn't make him change his mind.

At the the offer he inclines his head in acceptance, considering the valid point Aang makes with his offer. New ways of combat are invaluable if it might help him complete the Mission.

It also makes him remember something and he bends his head to write again. How is your wound?

Considering all that Aang has chosen not to say, he really would have no place to judge Bucky for avoiding the topic. He knows what it means to have painful histories he wants to keep out of view.

Aang smiles at the Bucky's acceptance of his offer--it'll be fun to show someone else how the airbenders do things--before angling himself and lifting the hem of his shirt (which feels just plain weird to wear) to show Bucky the bandage made of clothes taken from the department store. The bandage has stayed remarkably clean, considering all his work in a dusty crawlspace.

"Much better, thanks." If Bucky is paying attention, he'll notice a strange scar on his back that spreads out like a star burst before he lets the shirt drop again. "I think it's healing up okay. I've never heard of using a tube to get blood out before, but it worked really well!"

When Aang lifts his shirt the soldier leans forward to take a closer look at the bandage before nodding in approval. With what resources are to be found in this place it's as good a field dressing as one could hope for.

The marker goes back to a new piece of paper, words splashed across it in royal blue.

Good. I was taught at about it at the beginning of the arena.

Luckily for Aang, Bucky hadn't expected to need to use the technique so soon but it had worked well, as the boy pointed out, to say he had no proper materials.

Thor arrives a little later to the scene, he has his own affairs to attend to despite wanting to keep a good watch of Tony and Bucky. The sight of the boy's efforts earn him a confused stare, though it's hard to make out what he's doing properly. His allies have gathered around, so he assumes it's something mutually beneficial. It looks to be an escape, but he's not sure what good an escape will do at this rate.

He sweeps to the side when Aang drops down, raising a brow at him despite knowing it won't be clear in the darkness. A figure as imposing as is isn't exactly subtle, but he addresses himself to clear any suspicions of a sneak attack.

"An impressive landing." He observes. "What are you doing?"

Aang looks up at the giant man (with long yellow hair, will you look at that) just in time to see his lips move. He blinks owlishly, then gives a small, sheepish smile.

"Sorry. The alarms made me deaf." His voice is too loud, his words beginning to slur around the edges in an unfamiliar Nomadic accent. He instinctively makes a scribbling motion on his own palm. "Do you have anything to write that down?"

It disheartens Thor to see another child with what seems to be a friendly disposition stuck in here, though the little show of acrobatics has him suspecting that he may not be normal.

He balks for a second when Aang yells, but he makes the reason why clear soon enough. He nods in understanding, then shakes his head as Aang mimes. He points at the ceiling, then shrugs and holds his hands up in confusion, hoping he gets his meaning.

"What am I doing up there?"

Ah, that makes sense. Aang jerks his thumb in Tony's direction.

"He's telling me how to blow it up!"

...Aang, no, that's not how you make it sound at all advisable.

Thor nods in confirmation when Aang catches onto his meaning, smiling a little at the effectiveness of his miming until Aang jerks a thumb at Tony of all people. His smile fades somewhat and he gives the man a bland look from a distance, raising a brow at Aang.

"Why?" He asks, trying to accentuate the way his mouth opens so Aang can read his lips. Hopefully. Perhaps he should have gotten that paper after all, so he glances around as if in search of it.

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A constellation of tears on your lashes

[Closed to Tony]

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Open to anyone who is hanging out with Tony

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