{"id":30506,"date":"2013-02-06T21:42:07","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T21:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2013\/02\/06\/gadgeteerphilanthropist-iamthefirechild-i-18\/"},"modified":"2013-02-06T21:42:07","modified_gmt":"2013-02-06T21:42:07","slug":"gadgeteerphilanthropist-iamthefirechild-i-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/2013\/02\/06\/gadgeteerphilanthropist-iamthefirechild-i-18\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

gadgeteerphilanthropist<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

iamthefirechild<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI felt like a liar. I don\u2019t know how else to put it. I felt like \u2014 I couldn\u2019t come around the workshop or you, if he was there.\u201d She wrung her fingers together. \u201cTony, the fact that he wouldn\u2019t acknowledge me made me feel as though I was supposed to be a secret. From him!\u201d She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. \u201cHave you seen \u2014 I\u2019m sure Jarvis has a recording of what happened. Tony, Dummy was never going to be ready. The way he spoke, when he didn\u2019t have any idea at all that I was his \u2026 \u2018competition\u2019. He didn\u2019t want it to work. And I,\u201d she sighed, \u201cwas impatient. I felt left out and unwanted and like I was enabling you to cheat on him.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cI was not cheating,\u201d he snapped, instantly defensive, but it drained away quickly to a sort of pensive, sullen quiet as he thought over it, arms crossed and looking at the tiles of the balcony.\u00a0 \u2026Maybe it had been cheating, inadvertently.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t want to talk about this.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t come to Dubai to talk about this.\u00a0 Sure, they hadn\u2019t really dealt with the issue yet, but that was how Tony dealt with things; by not dealing<\/em> with them until they stopped bothering him.\u00a0 Eventually, though, he did look back up at her, almost like he hardly dared to.\u00a0 \u201cAre we sure there was no coaxing him around?\u201d\u00a0 \u2018Are we sure we couldn\u2019t have just been happy for five minutes<\/em>?\u2019 went unsaid.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

“I can’t answer that, Tony!” Summer’s voice cracked, half-anger half-anguish. “That was the last reason I went to talk to him. I want to coax him, I wanted to show that I was a person worthy of you. Of him. And the first \/fucking\/ thing he did was threaten to kill himself!” She called half a dozen sparks out of the air, swirling them around her hands, trying to hold her temper. She went on, bitter, “He was manipulating you, Tony. Using your emotions, your love for him, as a chokehold, a spiked collar. ‘Let me possess you or I’m going to kill myself.’<\/p>\n

“I’m not perfect. I’m jealous, short-tempered, I don’t think I’m pretty, and the ability I have makes me push aside my morals and ethics far too often. I have a smart mouth and a sharp tongue, I’m lazy as hell, and I set my expectations too high and don’t voice them enough.” The sparks swirled over to Tony, swooping around him in wild loops. “But by all the gods that ever were, I’ll love you just as you are, no matter whom you love or how or any other stupid thing. I’m sorry I was impatient. I’m sorry you got hurt. I’m sorry you had to choose like that.” The sparks cascaded down, vanishing before they hit the ground. “I guess the nightmares are my punishment, the price I pay for loving someone like you.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

gadgeteerphilanthropist: iamthefirechild: \u201cI felt like a liar. I don\u2019t know how else to put it. I felt like \u2014 I couldn\u2019t come around the workshop or you, if he was there.\u201d She wrung her fingers together. \u201cTony, the fact that he wouldn\u2019t acknowledge me made me feel as though I was supposed to be a … Continue reading <\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,199,1516,3607],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30506"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.firechildren.net\/lightfire\/iamthefirechild\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}