THIS CHAPTER HAS BEEN REVISED. IT CONTAINS PARTS OF THE OLD CHAPTER FIVE. Reviews left prior to April 25, 2021 may not make sense. I did this in an attempt to correct for a feeling that the plot was dragging thanks to the short chapters. This does mean that some later chapters were removed, including their reviews. I apologize for the inconvenience.
NOTHING SUBSTANTIVE HAS CHANGED. In very rare cases I adjusted chapter transitions.
Chapter Four: سورج کی روشنی
"We have to get her out of here," Yinsen says. "Before they figure it out."
"We can't even get ourselves out of here," Tony says, scraping the last of the food from his bowl. He looks down at the spoonful and leaves it, pushing the whole thing away.
"I'm sure they're looking for you, but they'll never find you in these mountains."
The other man reaches for Tony's bowl, stacking it with his own. "What you saw out there? That is your legacy, Stark. Your life's work. In the hands of those murderers."
For the first time, an emotion other than false politeness shakes the man's voice, and Tony grabs his arm.
"Who are you? Cook? Interpreter? Conscience?"
He laughs bitterly. "My job description is a little above your pay grade right now, wouldn't you say? You're a contractor. Maybe even an engineer. But it seems obvious that you work alone, hmm?" The man looks over to where Boots is lying, still awake, her body curled up in the fetal position and radiating fury.
"Your name. Give me a name. Or I'll start calling you something ridiculous, like the Babel Fish from Hitchhiker's Guide." Happy Hogan always says Tony's recklessness comes out best when he combines it with humor, but he's not coming up with his best material in this environment.
"How about I call you Bruce Wayne?"
Tony lets go with a sound of disgust. "I have way more money than Bruce Wayne's fictional fortune."
"You both lost your parents at a young age, inherited a fortune. Maybe even squandered it?"
They're in the middle of a cave in Afghanistan, and this man knows trivia from his life? For a few seconds Tony has an awful suspicion that he's a plant, on the side of the terrorists- but his behavior towards Boots belies that. His behavior towards Tony belies that, too. It's not deference, and it's not contempt. Tony hopes that by the time he has a name for it, he'll have done something to change it, and it won't matter anymore.
"You're confused. We met once, if you can believe it. At a technical conference in Bern. My name is Yinsen. Told you my first name in Bern, but I doubt you'd remember."
"I don't," Tony says, brows furrowing, looking at Yinsen with a lot more respect. His conscience pricks him. Why does he respect this man more because he's been to Switzerland, to a conference that Tony attended? Why is that what did it? Saving his life, albeit in this terrifying, body-altering kind of way, that wasn't enough?
"If I had been that drunk, I wouldn't remember me either," Yinsen laughs.
Tony suddenly wants very much to change whatever it is that's making Yinsen cover his true feelings with this humor that doesn't become him. He wants Boots to look at him like someone she respects, too. A lifetime of people kowtowing to him, Tony thinks, and it ends in a cave in the middle of nowhere, with two people who think he's a murderous piece of shit? Money isn't going to get him out of this.
"Doesn't look like I'll get the chance to get that drunk ever again."
There's a sound at the door. Yinsen goes over to see who it is, comes back with a pile of clothes, all men's. Tony snags a black wife beater, changes into it right away. Even in the short time he'd worn it, the white shirt Boots had given him had been rough on the wiring, kept snagging. He doesn't want to stop wearing it, though. He likes the way it smells. Does that make him what she said? Tony doesn't think so, but he does like to see her hair down. He would never force her to do that, and the more he thinks about it, the more he sees her point.
He was framing her looks as a commodity, something she, if she really were Rory Fall, would already been in the business of selling. But he's in the business of selling his innovations, his weaponry- and he's furious to be told he must build a version of his own designs against his will. Enough to be considering not doing it at all, and risking the consequences.
The parallels are so obvious he should stop calling himself a genius.
"So?" Yinsen says, interrupting Tony's self reflections.
"So, what?" Tony asks, grabbing a beanie hat from the smaller pile. He wonders where some of the other clothes went, and then looks over to see that Yinsen's set a small pile of them over by Boots' cot. "She asleep?"
"Either that or a fury coma." His condemnation is damning.
"Yeah, I owe her an apology," Tony allows. "I don't want them to use me, either." He sighs, shakes his head, puts on the hat. The fire is dying down, and the cave's not as warm as it was just a half hour ago.
"So what are you going to do about it? Wear their hat and tell them no?"
If Yinsen had been Obie, Tony would tell him to stop busting his balls about it. That phrase, though applicable, doesn't seem appropriate at all for this slight, determined linguist/scientist/doctor. He does notice one thing, though. There's less humor in Yinsen's tone, now. That feels like somewhat of a victory.
"I can't build what they're asking me to. And when I don't, I'll be dead in a week, along with you and the girl." Tony clenches his jaw. The words feel true in a way that makes him want to punch a wall that will collapse under the strength of his arm. That won't happen here, he knows.
"Well then. This is a very important week for you, isn't it?" Yinsen says. His expression is challenging, fatherly, man to man, in a way Tony's never really experienced. Obie doesn't relate like that, though Tony knows he thinks he does.
A disturbing thought floats through his consciousness, not staying long enough to make much of an impression. Obie's been awfully jovial lately, too. Tony lets it go, chalks it up to cave fever, or something.
He looks over to where Yinsen was just sitting, but the man is gone. Tony sees him over by his own cot, meticulously setting his suit coat on a hanger protected by some kind of colored cloth, before sliding it into a garment bag.
Was Yinsen at a different conference, when he was kidnapped? He certainly hadn't packed for this 'job' of his, and his attitude toward the terrorists isn't that of an ally or a contractor. It's more like that of a useful slave. Tony can be one of those, if it'll keep them alive long enough to come up with a way to out. Hell, if he stalls for long enough, maybe Rhodey can find him.
An important week, Yinsen had said. A week isn't long enough, not at all. Tony knows his products, always has. That part of the business is important to him, and it impresses colleagues and women alike. There are a lot of his products out there in that stockpile. If he has to be building something, does it have to be a Jerico missile? And how long can he realistically take to construct it?
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Yinsen wakes Emory up early in the morning the next day.
"Stark's going to have them bring in all of the materials he needs to build something. It's going to be a lot," he predicts. "I brought you this. Sit here, seem busy, even if you don't wish to read it."
He hands her a well-worn paperback book with a cover that seems straight out of 1970's sci fi. Emory doesn't have time to examine it closely right away, because as soon as she and Yinsen move a second rice bag onto her cot and turn the one that was already there sideways as a bit of a barricade, the door bursts open.
The next three hours are full of activity. Stark's in his element, it seems, his voice confident and droning, listing off things that he wants for his proposed assignment. She'd heard he and Yinsen speaking about the vast array of weapons with his name on them that had been assembled outside, but now they're assembled inside their cave. Emory hopes to hell it's safe, doubts it is, but oddly trusts Stark to be at least smart about how to make the space as safe as it possibly can be. He's a well-known narcissist, after all, so his safety, she presumes, is paramount.
Yinsen had been clever in his warning. She covers herself with the blanket, leans on the rice bags, and tries to tune out the noise and bustle as best she can. The rice bags break up the shape of her body on the cot, the book gives her an excuse not to look around and make eye contact.
She'd been right about the cover (it was from the 70's), but the book was published in the 50's. It's by Arthur C. Clarke, a name she recognized but had never read anything of. Childhood's End is solidly science fiction, something she wouldn't have expected Yinsen to read, though Emory supposes she doesn't know him that well. The book's set in the late 20th century, a time period that probably felt distant and exciting to Clarke in the 50's. At the dawn of the space age, a technologically superior race shows up and halts war and conflict, imposing their will to create a kind of utopia.
When she reads that Earth's new 'overlords' interfere to prevent behavior seen as harsh or barbaric, Emory understands more about why the mild-mannered doctor might have been drawn to the book. It's hard to pay close attention to reading with all the noise, and she's just barely an exciting point when it seems like maybe the terrorist work crew might be done carrying things in. In the book, a human has smuggled an object designed to let him see what the physical form of the overlords are onto the ship where he acts as liaison. The character is desperate to see what they look like, why they're hiding, and he uses the item- and seems to be so horrified that he agrees with the idea that humanity must wait fifty years to see what he's seen.
"You like it?" Yinsen asks, startling her. He's standing beside the cot. She's spent so much time ignoring the movement of multiple men around the room that she had trained herself not to notice.
"Yeah. Hard not to want to make some sort of strange parallels to our situation, though," she says. "I guess that makes you Stormgren, the liaison. Have you seen the overlord here? It's not that bearded guy, is it?"
Yinsen's expression is pleased, but he shakes his head. "The leader here might be described as a devil, yes, but he would never cease hostilities for the good of anyone, much less humanity's future."
Emory sets down the book with a mental note of the page she stopped. She looks around at the cave, which is now covered in Stark-branded weaponry, to a frightening degree. "This seems like it's proving your point fairly well."
"Yinsen? Do you know if they gave us pencil sharpeners?" Stark calls out. He's taken off the black overshirt, the white shirt pushed up to his elbows, and he's got a clipboard in one hand, and what she assumes is a pencil with a broken tip in the other. He's wearing fingerless gloves, too, which she's kind of jealous about, because her hands get really cold at night, here.
"They did. The alternative was a knife, after all," Yinsen says, with amusement. He leaves to go help Stark, and Emory sits back down on her cot, scratching at her leg bandage yet again.
With a sigh, she unties the leather strap and pulls the white cloth away from one leg. The stitches are dry, and Emory supposes it's healing, since it's itchy as hell. After freeing both legs (one had bled a little, probably from the night before, but it was dry and clotted now), she decides to forego asking for a new bandage for a while, rolling the pants down and 'pegging' them at her ankles to keep them to stay.
After going through the clothes Yinsen gave her, she finds a smaller shirt that buttons halfway down. Emory tosses a look over her shoulder, sees that both men are faced away and busy, and swaps shirts as quickly as she can. It's grey, and she knows if she had a mirror, she'd probably see that it matches her eyes just about perfectly. With the sleeves pushed up, it almost looks like her size, too. There's something really confidence-building about that, after what she has been wearing.
She puts on her sandals and makes her way around the various piles of actual freaking missiles over to the wide, new table that's been set up in the middle of the room.
"Excuse me, Miss, but I'm going to need your name for my records if you're going to be in proximity of all of this dangerous equipment," Stark says, from his seat at the table. It's a cute way to point out that they haven't really been introduced.
Yinsen has told her that there's no audio for the terrorist's cameras, but there's no reason to take chances. "'Fall' has so many negative connotations to it, why don't you put me down as Autumn?" Emory says carefully.
Stark must be in a good mood, because this makes him smile. Like before, its effect on her is powerful, and she finger combs her hair over to the right side of her face and basically hides in it, trying to conceal the way her cheeks have to be turning red. Trying to tell herself that she shouldn't think he's attractive is like drawing a line in the sand and ordering the tide not to cross it. Even if the water could obey, the permeable, mutable state of the sand would mean the line would move.
"So you associate more with leaves than love, when falling?" he asks, his brown-eyed gaze direct and challenging.
Emory knows this man is way out of her league. "You're the one who said I'm the hired help, aren't you? I'm the gardener, not the roses, and definitely not the woman you give them to."
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"Would you agree that I have a certain… reputation, with women?" Tony asks Boot- Autumn, a name he's still isn't sure is hers, but is better than the one he had been using so he'll take it. Her expression when describing herself as some sort of onlooker to romance makes him feel a sense of responsibility to refute it. As the PA to a known flirty, flighty, fragile celebrity, surely she must know why she had been overlooked?
She's backing away, her forehead creased with regret. "Never mind, okay?"
"No," Tony says, getting up. "No never mind. You say you're a gardener, well I'm-" he snaps his fingers, pointing. "I'm the florist. I'm all about variety. I don't worry about roots." He throws his hands out, picking up his battery and starting toward her. "I'll come to you for advice on gardening, you come to me for advice on women."
He can finally see her eyes clearly enough to note that they're grey. They're flashing with defiance, and honestly, Tony's cheering her on, in his head. She's obviously been under her boss's influence for far too long, has gotten used to giving in far too often.
"I don't need advice on women," Autumn says. She has to stop her retreat, because she's literally backing up into a box-shaped stack of Stark-branded missiles. Tony quickens his steps, so she's trapped.
"You clearly do. You don't have any objectivity about yourself."
"You think you know better than I do the experience I've had being ignored by men for most of my adult life? Just by observing me for a few days?" she asks, voice thick with derision.
Tony puts his hands into his pockets. "As a man, I can tell you that was almost certainly not about you. As a man who spent time with your boss, I can tell you that the fame chasers were always going to go for her, and so were the guys looking for an easy lay."
The word 'lay' leaves his mouth a split second before he regrets saying it.
"I should slap you, but I don't want to risk setting anything off," Autumn says in a low, angry voice. Something about the tone sparks a deep, desperate desire in him to hear it in a different context.
Her new grey shirt fits better than the others, the first he's seen besides the black blouse which nips in enough to show the curve of her waist. Autumn backs up again and Tony realizes he'd taken another step toward her. They're barely six inches apart, meaning she has to look up at him. Her full lips are parted, and if Tony could hit pause on the moment, it could easily be mistaken for a sexually charged one, instead of anger. They're staring at each other, her cheeks flushed, his breathing quickened.
"I could take it," Tony says, leaning over to say the words like they're in confidence.
"Take what?" she asks, brows furrowing, ready for a fight.
"The slap. Hit me." Then kiss it better, he doesn't say. It's a line, one he's said multiple times before, and it always works. Unfortunately, Autumn would probably be the exception. Power dynamics, again.
"Doesn't that depend on where I'd slap? You're not used to having a weakness, are you?" she asks. Her gaze drops from his eyes to where his chest bulges out from the electromagnet housing, then back up. It's still healing, hurts like hell, and she's right, it's a weakness in multiple ways. But the solution to weakness, Tony's always found, is to project confidence.
"I tell you what," he challenges. "You don't have to slap. Just touch me. Anywhere. Do it and I'll move back." He can't wait to find out where.
"How about for once this week I not be at the mercy of a man?" Autumn sighs, rubbing her eyes with the finger and thumb of one hand.
"I'm not a terrorist. I'm on your side. You need to stand up for yourself. Push me out of the way."
"Honestly, I'm better at doing that verbally," she says, almost to herself.
"You think you can do that, go ahead." Tony's voice is just a little condescending, and for good reason. When he looks at a woman's lips, verbal sparring isn't what he has in mind.
Autumn crosses her arms and looks to the side, thinking. She's sinking her teeth into her full bottom lip, and Tony is completely certain she's not doing it to up the tension between them, even though that's exactly what's happening. Suddenly, she shoots him a bit of a shocked look and sucks her lips in as if telling herself to shush.
"That, right there," Tony says, lips twisting into a smirk. "Say that."
"It's-" she falters, but looks up at him.
Her grey eyes are impish, teasing almost. Her attitude is slowly laying fuel for a bonfire of desire inside him, one whose strength is surprising. It's more than proximity, he thinks. Tony's standards are usually lower, when he's got less of a choice- but with every minute he spends with this young woman, the more unexpected respect he has for her. Except where it comes to her devotion to her boss. That's her weakness.
"It's none of my business, kind of an… intimate detail," she confesses.
Tony would be glad to hear her describe something he did with Rory, if he can watch the effect the act of relating it will have on her. He's already looking forward to it, despite having negative memories of Rory Fall.
"Tell me and I'll step back," he promises.
Autumn closes her eyes, her cheeks dusted pink. "Before the convoy left, Rory made a comment. I remember it because it's just-" she opens her eyes to roll them, shaking her head. "Rory said you liked kissing too much, as if that can even be possible. But the thing is-" she looks up at him, right into his eyes. Tony is pinned. "It's better with feelings. Kissing." Her lips curve up into a secret smile, her whole face lighting up with an inner fire he wants to have been the source of. "A thousand times better. So that's my 'gardener' perspective, to you, the florist. Lay down some roots, if that's something you really like. You won't regret it."
He steps back for her, wordlessly. She's just made him desperate to kiss her, while simultaneously throwing up a vibranium wall between their lips. He's not a commitment guy.
Fuck.
Is this what Henry VIII thought, when looking at Anne Boleyn? Somehow inventing a new religion just to get a woman to say yes doesn't seem quite as outrageous as it had when he'd first learned about them.
Tony heads back to the table and picks the pencil back up to complete the list of steps to safely access the small amount of palladium in the style of missile he's going to start with. He takes some deep breaths, focuses on the kind of breathing and thoughts that will ease his arousal back down to a low ebb. There's only one impossible thing that's going to be happening in this cave, and that's building his father's dream of a miniature ARC reactor.
It seems much more likely than managing to get that earnest young woman's face to light up picturing a kiss shared with him.
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Emory heads back to her cot with a lot on her mind.
She wishes she had just put her hand on his chest below the magnet, and pushed him out of the way! That would have left her feeling less exposed, less like she'd directed that magnet to point at her body, instead. Can Stark even help it, the way he looks at women? Is it the same for everyone? She has to assume so. It's not like she doesn't know she's often relegated to the 'nice boobs in a dress' role when going places with Rory.
It had happened so often recently that she actually feels like she might have lied to Stark about not being used to being on display. But it was always like being on a shelf, someone to look at and not touch, a facet of time spent with Rory Fall, her quiet PA with the big breasts.
Emory had hated being on the periphery like that at first, but people didn't notice her after a while, and they'd say and do things that they wouldn't have, if they'd known she was listening. She'd never have done the competition show at all if she'd known what that aspect of show business was like. No, Emory wants to do shows, musical theater, her favorite part of high school. She's auditioned a few times, but nothing has come of it. It's a shame, because as a contralto, her voice is valued but rare, and there isn't as much competition for those roles.
Nothing had come of her association with Rory, none of the strings pulled like they'd been promised. Emory had told herself it was any number of things, but now as she sits in a cave in Afghanistan, the truth is so clear it's embarrassing.
Rory needed her, and that was all that mattered. It was clear to everyone. Was it Rory or the execs that made a discreet, discouraging phone call?
Did it matter?
She takes off her shoes and throws them. At 20, 22, 24, those were the perfect ages to break in. Now she's 25, and it's not old, but if it takes five or so years to work up from ensemble, that makes her 30, 32, 33 by the time she gets that chance.
Stark is looking over. He stands up, and she scrambles to her feet.
"Don't."
"Oh, I'm not much of a gofer," he says, grabbing something from the other side of the table.
Emory feels like a complete idiot.
"I'd kick them over, but the little rocks can really stick in there," Stark adds, as if that helps smooth things over. "That and you look like you could probably set off one of these rockets with just your eyes," he mutters.
"I want something to do," she says.
"Well, you can't help carry, but you can find an organized place to put that stuff?" he suggests, gesturing to the collection of objects on the table.
"I'm plenty strong for my size," Emory says, but she walks over, snags her shoes, and meets Stark at the table. He gestures to the things he needs to stay, and she grabs a rectangular metal box from against the wall, cleans it out as best she can, and puts the rest of the items inside it.
"Your cot is the one in the middle of the room?" she asks, as Stark and Yinsen start carrying a missile over.
"Mmhmm," Stark says, straining a little.
Emory notes that the way they have to carry the thing does actually press it against their torsos. That's… not an available option for her, unless she varied positioning.
"What if I kept this under mine? I don't want you to lose these things if they come in and start moving things around."
He dusts off his hands and looks at her, his brown eyes assessing. "Ok. Thank you."
Only after she puts the box with an inch or two sticking out at the foot of her cot does she realize that she's put herself into the rhythm of his work as a matter of necessity. When he needs those things, he'll have to come over to get them, whether she's helping, or not.
Emory's out of things to do but watch Stark, so she backs off out of his line of sight and leans up against the wall to do that. He's removing screws that hold on the tail, always careful, especially when he has to turn the body of the thing to access the next tiny screw.
"How many languages do you speak?" he asks Yinsen. The interpreter rattles off many different ones, his tone implying a reluctant respect for the number of men the group has assembled, from so many various sources. Stark asks Yinsen what they call themselves, and Emory winces when Yinsen's reply is to call them loyal customers of Stark Industries. He names the organization Ten Rings, which Emory's never heard of before, but she's not surprised. To say she and these people travel in different circles would be an understatement.
A shout sounds on the other side of the doors. Stark puts down the battery pack for a cordless drill he'd just examined, and Yinsen gets up to stand between them and the door. They open, and the bearded man comes in with a CD jewel case in his hand.
Emory's heart sinks. Is this it? The point where they compare her face with Rory's? She waits for the man to look at her, then at the jewel case, and frown- but the last part doesn't happen. He comes towards her, Yinsen trailing behind, and grins, saying something while shaking the CD case.
"He says he wants you to sing something from it."
Stark's standing behind the two of them, his expression grim, but Emory smiles at the terrorist. It has to be the 'Watching' album, her first. The album cover is of the back of Rory's head and shoulders as she looks out on a beach scene. They'd styled her hair exactly like Emory's is now.
"Which one?" she asks Yinsen, who passes the question along. Stark's waving her off with subtle hand movements, which she's grateful for considering the cameras are presumably still active. She ignores him, tossing her head to draw the terrorist's attention to her hair, which she knows he likes.
If she can buy time acting the way he expects, she will.
The man shrugs when Yinsen passes along her query.
"Okay," she says.
"Don't you need instruments?" Stark asks. Emory's pretty sure he's doing it to get her out of the assignment, like he thinks she'll fail miserably and he'll have to watch her get shot and it'll ruin his day, or something.
He's wrong, though. She's the one who taught Rory all of these songs.
She decides to sing the title track, because it's kind of ballad-y with minimal accompaniment. The song is a low, sultry plea to the singer's lover to come back to her, to stop worrying about the things that keep them apart. It's one of the most emotional songs on the album; Emory's heard that it's harder for people to kill their victims when they see them as humans with emotional ties to the world and others. She can't build something out of a stockpile of weapons, so Emory Autumn's going to fight with the tools she has.
She doesn't have perfect pitch, but she has relative pitch, so she starts in what is almost certainly the correct key.
I can't go about my day
No shower, no coffee, no train
Nothing's been the same
Since you pulled away
I get your life's a mess
I don't travel in your set
Can't afford the right dress
That don't make this hurt less
What good's the money without love
Headlines don't touch your face at night
Do you drive your Ferrari with the top down
Feelin' the wind like my hands in your hair
Do you smile for the cameras knowing I'm watching
Do you sit alone and ache like I do
Premieres, interviews, fundraisers
Every girl you touch calls you sir
Your kingdom of subjects, empty as air
While this pauper watches from afar
What good's the money without joy
Magazines can't make you cry out a name
Do you drive your Ferrari with the top down
Feelin' the wind like my hands in your hair
Do you smile for the cameras knowing I'm watching
Do you sit alone and ache like I do
I want you to know I'm watching
Counting the frown lines I'd have soothed
I want you to know I'm crying
Thinking about how perfectly we moved
Money ain't memory, sweetheart- you can't take it with you
Can't make you care more about your heart than your legacy
So I'll just be here watching
Watching
Emory had gotten carried away around the second verse, closing her eyes and focusing on the words. At first she'd been remembering trying to get Rory to understand the word 'pauper,' arguing with her that her fans would not assume she was saying the word 'puppy.' But once she'd hit the words she loved most from the song, about the wind feeling like a lover's hands, she'd thrown everything she had into the song.
When she's done with the last, resonant low note, she opens her eyes. The bearded terrorist was waiting for her cue, it seems, because as soon as she looks at him, he grins, clapping his hands vociferously. He babbles a bunch of things out in a rush, nodding at Yinsen.
"He says you will be worth every penny."
"What a compliment," Emory says, her knees suddenly weak with both relief and deferred fear. She stumbles over to the table they eat their meals on. The man starts for the door, tossing a comment over his shoulder that makes Yinsen wince.
"Better than the recording, he says."
"Yeah, that's for a reason," she mutters, scrubbing her hands over her face. "Fuck, that was terrifying."
"You have an amazing talent," Yinsen says quietly.
"Much good it's done me, but thanks." Emory sighs. "Are there any more chunks of bread?"
"Yes, sit, I'll bring you some."
She sits, suddenly cold. Looking over her shoulder towards her cot, Emory kind of wishes she could just will her blanket over to her.
"Rory can barely sing at all," Stark says. His voice sounds strange, almost like he's struggling to breathe. Emory shifts her gaze from her cot to the table where the billionaire is standing, staring at her.
"That's not really true. She's a soprano, but she can fake singing low, singing like me, and that's what the execs have asked her to do for years. It fucks up your vocal cords, straining like that," Emory says. She's usually far more angrily defensive when talking about her friend, but there had been a moment where she'd thought she was going to die just by virtue of not being Rory. It's still fucking with her head.
Years of Rory having to pretend to be Emory, vocally. At first, they'd tried to get her to act differently, too- less excitable and fashion obsessed, more sexy and aloof. It had almost been a compliment for Emory, the idea that this might have been what they saw in her personality… but none of that really mattered. She'd just been a template, overlooked, likely discarded had it not been for Rory's initial desperation and sense of guilt.
These things had been easier to ignore when she'd been working with Rory every day. Now? Some of the things she'd let go for years are proving that they've only seemed harmless. She's been sweeping them under the rug for so long the dust bunnies have grown teeth.
"Does she pay you to do that? Explain away all her flaws?" Stark asks. He's come over to the table.
"Here, they'll bring more tomorrow, and it'll be stale by then," Yinsen says, handing her a large chunk of bread.
Emory takes a bite and looks up at Stark. He looks shaken, but she supposes that makes sense. The song is about a rich man, something she hadn't really considered in context with Stark until just now. Because of his accusatory tone and seeming shock at her level of talent is nonzero, she feels loose and combative.
"No, she doesn't pay me to tell the truth about her singing voice when someone disparages it to me, I just do that because she's my friend."
"Is she your friend, at this point?"
"Song hit a little too close to home, Mr. Florist?" Emory asks, tipping her head to the side and smiling sweetly.
Stark inclines his head, seeming to accept her jibe. "So hey, what happened to the 'it's better with feelings' guy?" he asks, leaning his palms on the table, looking at her intently.
"Long-distance didn't work out. Which kind of bears out what I said, doesn't it?" she says, holding his gaze.
"Who left?"
"I did."
He looks at her for many seconds, tracing his eyes across her face, along her hair, across her chest, and back up at her eyes. "It was a tour, wasn't it? She took you on tour, and you lost him." Stark's smug certainty pisses her off.
"Fuck you," she says, getting up and walking away.
"Imagine what a force of nature you'd be with someone who deserved that level of loyalty!" he shouts after her.