@all | before the event

[industries]

> ts@abraxas-proxy:~$ wall "People's memories of this place"

[ Anyone unfamiliar with computer terminals might be taken aback at the mechanical font that scrolls across their vision, though the jumps and starts in typing speed leave no doubt that a very human brain is behind the text. ]

> Broadcast message from ts@abraxas-proxy (tty/1) :
> People's memories of this place
>
> Don't normally crowdsource, but
> has anyone out there ever heard of someone who got home and actually
> remembered their days here at the renfaire?
>
> Not looking for peer-reviewed analysis.
> I'll take crumbs
> or
> whatever else we've got here on Mind-Reddit.

Comments

[sorser]

Fair enough. I can deal with being second to last.

[But off-the-cuff is what Stephen always leans into when he's trying to parse better ways to reply, which comes easily yet no less awkward while couched in the sense that much of this communique is... complicated. It's Complicated has always been the defining trait between their conversations, though maybe those hard edges had been smoothed slightly over time. Now? He wonders if they're right back where they started.

He can't even blame Tony, really, if that's the case.]

I won't presume to know with certainty how you are. But disoriented, unmoored, and probably very exhausted are the top three contenders if I had to pick.

[industries]

[ On some level, Tony knows Strange doesn't relish this. Actually – he knows it on every level, at every frequency. He's now seen the circumstances firsthand – the loss, the stakes, the impossible choices made and the measurements thereof.

At the end of the day, they had to solve the same equation – few versus many. And they came to the same objective result.

But Strange had to give five years, like billions of others – not his whole life. His everything. ]

> Top three contenders, huh.
> Guess you used your chosen field of expertise to excise the concept of "grieving" from your brain–
> smart.
> Practical.

[sorser]

[Harsh. He should have expected it. He does expect it, this kind of kickback from Tony. Because yes, the man's lost everything, and Stephen would be lying if he said he didn't have a hand in that outcome.

Even so.]

Right, because I'm cold and practical and don't feel at all bad about having to sacrifice a few to save many. The trolley problem, my favorite kind.

[That was definitely sarcasm.]

Stark, I'm trying to extend an olive branch. Can we go three seconds without you slapping it straight out of my hands? I just want to see if there's anything I can do for you.

[industries]

[ It's a minute before the reply comes through. ]

> I know.
> This isn't about you, even if that's categorically hard for you to believe.
>
> I
>
>
> I get it.
> You took a dad from a little girl, but at the end of the day
> so did I.

[sorser]

[Well. Now Tony's made it really difficult to know how to reply. Sniping at each other is such an easy habit to fall into, despite his declaration of handing over an "olive branch". Now that he's faced with something more sincere—and given the nature of this post, what did he expect, really?—he finds himself fumbling over what to write.

It takes an almost equally long minute to respond, then.]

What is it about, then? What’s the point of this post?

[If he’s not returning home, if he can't, then—?]

[industries]

[ The question of the hour. ]

> It's

[ To say goodbye. Give closure. Let them know he's okay.

But the thought dies somewhere along the way, before it even gets far enough in to project any pre-speech-cortex shimmering text. The resolve that burned so fiercely three conversations ago shifts like ashes in the pit of his stomach.

Because it's empty. A lie. Viktor said it himself, a million times, brick wall truths to Tony's screaming locomotive before he ever made his shot in the dark of the network. Time is relative. Circumstances infinite. There will always be a wife who grieves, a daughter who hurts. That's the objective truth, and Tony knows it better than most.

And the subjective. Would it – would it really make it easier? For them to know. ]

>
>
> Do you
>
> did we make the right call?

[sorser]

[To Stephen, that's the real question of the hour. The burden of he's carried since that day he swept through a million different timelines, all of which ended with untenable losses. All except one.

Did he make the right call? No, Tony's wording is precise, and it makes something wrench in his chest, the use of it, like something finally shifting -- Did they make the right call?]

It was the only call we could have made. All the other outcomes were worse. I know. I lived them.

[But he knows, too, this is barely a comfort.]

That doesn’t mean we have to like the hand we were dealt or the hand we had to play to counteract it.

I don’t think I will ever see it as the “right” decision. But I’ll always believe we made the best one we could. I've accepted the consequences of that. I don't have a choice.