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Tony is slow, floundering, yet made indispensable by merely surviving. The agency is destroyed and he flourishes like a weed. Persistence is a biological quality Sharp begrudgingly respects—it's relying on Tony to protect him that makes the inside of his plating itch.
When he wakes up, he's still in the augment grafter and not a cell, so Tony isn't entirely useless. He lets metal take control of his anesthetic-drunk organs, and runs diagnostics on the new augment as he stands. Skeletal Suspension? What a waste.
"Oh," says Tony. "I didn't know they could do that."
Sharp follows his gaze to two familiar white flowers glinting on his own arm. The wave of repulsion shocks the rest of him awake. Already? He only burned it off two days ago. But that was before the raid and vestigial soulmarks are the least of his problems now. "Move it, meatbag."
Tony doesn't react. The blase expression on his face is finally gone. His mouth is open slightly, eyes wide. It's insight, or enlightenment, an eureka moment Sharp hasn't seen since they parted ways twenty years ago.
Has he ever seen Tony without the bracers or lab coat?
"That's interesting," Tony says, and Sharp grabs him and smothers his mouth with his hand, before he says anything, anything else.
"It's of no interest to you," he hisses. "When Incognita is online, I'm leaving, I'll tear my brain out by the roots and you'll never see me again. Understood, Doctor?"
Tony blinks. His breath is disgustingly moist against his metallic palm. Sharp lets go, not panicking.
"When?" Tony smirks. "Not if?"
"I'm not dying with you, you teratoma," Sharp howls, "Let alone loving y—"
"A sound bug has raised the alarm level," Central cuts in over the uplink. "Care to explain, on the jet?"
Central's angry they were slow and too loud. She doesn't say a word about the soulmark blemishing Sharp's left forearm. She likely already knew. What kind of spymaster wouldn't?
Pity her acerbic words can't etch metal. Sharp scours the jet for something to remove the violet weed. He cracks the luggage cabin's lock and tears through the detritus of previous missions for a laser, sandpaper, anything.
"Teratoma was a good one," Tony says from the hatch behind him. "Even better than calling me a fungus."
Here? Fine, then, Sharp won't drag out the farce. This is not the first unpleasant truth he has confronted. He raises his defenses and slowly turns around.
Tony's hair is wet from the shower, cap and headset missing, bracers gone. He's holding his left arm up and turning it, letting Sharp see both sides are bare skin, a shade lighter than the rest of him. Barren—no, markless.
All of Sharp's processes running since the mission halt in an unpleasant welling of bleak emotion, under the enormous relief. Garbage data. What a waste of his time. He nulls it and puts on his usual dismissive sneer. "It changes nothing, either way."
"Of course." Sharp can't tell if Tony is relieved too. Not that it matters. "But I know you. You'd act like you didn't care until you tear my arm off to make certain."
"So you think I care?" Doesn't he know him? Sharp scowls. "If you did, why not keep the bracers on so you could manipulate me with game theory, like a typical mammal?"
Tony flinches. "I wanted a closer look." He glances away. "That's all."
Sharp hadn't expected 'mammal', of all names, to hit. Perplexing. It's the only reason he acquiesces to Tony's curiosity and holds his marred arm out to him.
Tony corners him later in the mess and talks at him between gulps of bad jet coffee. "Prosthetic manifestation is documented but I've never heard of a soulmark on bare metal. Are there other cyborgs with these?"
"Why would they tell me?"
"No? And knowing you, you remove it without thinking." Tony smiles as he shakes his head. "Unbelievable."
Sharp regrets coming here. The caffeine boost to wetware processing is not worth this. "Your point?"
"You're not the only one who resents his soulmark. But you control far more variables." Tony gets closer, somehow. "Did you consider reverse engineering?"
Sharp grimaces. "Why should I study anthropology?"
"It's material science, Alex!" Tony nearly spills his coffee gesticulating. "If it can't be removed without heat or abrasion like a normal soulmark, it's manipulating metallic crystal structures! What if it sharpened those edges you always mutter about instead? What if your perfect body was your destiny?"
Hone his form through force of will alone? He's ashamed it hadn't occurred to him—before his brain engages and he snorts, loudly. "Plastech alone spends trillions on soulmark engineering without results. What makes this different?"
"You're different. Aren't you always saying that?"
Sharp grins. He concedes this point.
"And even dead-end research this novel is easily dressed up for corps to spend those trillions on." Tony steps away only to refill the mug. "Enough that it won't matter if we're still fugitives."
"Spoken like a true academic."
"I'm merely speculating." Tony's eyes twinkle. "We have to survive first."
He's doing it again. Curling around him, needling him with that joyful enthusiasm. And it isn't any primate-brained placebo from seeing ugly flowers on another man's arm—Tony's just like this.
Sharp isn't agreeing to anything. He was keeping Tony alive anyway. Central would never shut up otherwise.
In the OMNI Foundry, Sharp drags Tony's unconscious body to the transporter himself. Skeletal Suspension isn't useless after all.
Seconds before the transporter's activation, Tony's left hand twitches. Sharp wipes the blood away. Blue light reflects off the white Chinese violets when he realises.
He keeps checking in the medbay, until Malik threatens him into leaving. He didn't need to check. He knows the difference. He is the difference. Did Xu think he could fool him? That pesky, conniving, naive rat bastard.
"Your sub-dermal tools are in your right arm," he tells Tony the moment he enters their cabin. It's not a cutting accusation, so much as blurted out.
Tony blinks in affable confusion, but his shoulders tense. He knows he's caught. "Yes?"
"You never said both your arms are prosthetic."
"I don't care to talk about it," he replies mildly. He turns away, preparing for bed.
"You picked well," Sharp says, sincerely. "Particularly the synthetic epidermis, It has so little everyday wear, even considering your bracers, it's near mint. You only replace top line skin like that every five years. More than that is expensive and unnecessary. Not unless you need to." His voice lowers, barely audible over the jet ambiance. "Or want to."
"I had them serviced recently." Tony turns abruptly. His smile's stopped reaching his eyes, again. "I got them after K&O arrested me. I'm not sure how I would've told you when it happened, after you left without even a LinkedIn invite."
Sharp is taking too long to process this. Tony climbs into his bunk, out of sight, still wearing the bracers.
"Thank you for getting me out of the Foundry," he's saying. "But you don't need to worry about me any more."
"What about the dead-end research?" Sharp demands, minutes later. There's no reply.
When Tony is asleep, Sharp checks. Bracers off. No mark. Not now.
He lies down. An hour later, he considers: if his soulmark adapted, did Tony's?
Verification is trivial: Tear that perfect skin like silk. It would only hurt a moment before the neural safety switches trigger.
Or maybe, pull the carbon flesh apart to find petals on Tony's titanium alloy bones, catching purple in the light like his.
But he doesn't want to hurt Tony again.
It's his second dire realisation in twenty four hours. He can't debunk this one. For fuck's sake. This is how plants become weeds.