Summary:Troubles with work are good to share. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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The night is heavy with low-hanging clouds that threaten another drenching of the city now that the first storm is passed. Several more are on the way, promising thunder and lightning and the steady patter of rainfall. But for now, there is a break in the deluge. Enough peace stolen in the evening that one can take advantage of it. And upon the rooftop of the Avengers' mansion the hero known as Hawkeye does so.
The sound of the city is ubiquitous throughout, and usually dominates conversation or contemplation when one is upon the street level. But upon the rooftop the sounds are baffled by that high reinforced fence. It blocks the sightlines of people trying to peer down upon the mansion but also allows the to have some quiet when needed. Though certainly now and again a car horn will break the reverie, or raised voices. But this time of night that's rare.
And this time of night is the best time to steal a six-pack from the kitchen, to climb up the steps and out onto that deck. And with a creak of metal, Hawkeye drags one of those six chairs at the metal table and turns it around so he can sit, recline a bit…
And then pop the top of a bottle.
Deluges are a pleasure for certain people, those who would rather watch the great storms attracted by the city's heat bubble play across the liminal boundaries of sea and land. Great cloud banks fall apart where they mass up on the Atlantic side of the city, atmospheric rush hour broken up between volleys cast by the easterly blown wind. Perfect, in all respects, for a bit of storm-chasing.
Or demon hunting.
Or omphaloskepsis, really.
The crack of the bottle follows a crack of ozone where oxygen molecules summarily shunted aside give way for a corporeal manifestation. Atoms fall in on themselves as several potted plants confined to the rooftop's edge abruptly shiver, leaves and stalks braided together in an odd teal-tinted witchlight. That striation briefly plays over a young woman in violet, though when the aquatic radiance dies back, burgundy reasserts its tyranny over her. She carries a plastic jug in one hand, filled by water and phosphorescent plankton of some kind. Setting it down immediately, she checks her coat and boots in rapid order with the kind of hastened pat-down to ensure no stray visitors accompanied her.
Or tentacles. Tentacles might be unfortunate. Still, she rakes her fingers through her hair and comes away fairly satisfied by that cool expression. Another car horn bleats its complaint and she looks up, wide eyes for once not tinted more cerise than green-gold.
"Barton," she says. Hey, a familiar face beats a flung hex and a startled reaction.
The freshly opened beer is lifted by the neck as he gestures in the direction of the sorceress, offering a name that's neither hers nor really offering some semblance to her, "Bopeep."
Though the murmuring of it does draw a smile from his lips. Just enough of a one to recall the operation they ran together several weeks ago. He does, however, take some time to consider the flora that had been twisted by her arrival, its mobility enhanced by the mischievous powers that seem to trail after her even at rest.
"Thirsty?" He lifts a chin toward the now five-pack of imported South American beer that usually is accompanied by a lime but in this case forethought had escaped him. "Help yourself."
It's at that point that he slouches in his chair, propping a heavy work boot upon the seat beside him cutting her off from the one nearest but not the other.
Anyone else save Pietro might receive a withering stare on just this side of terrorizing. Faint reflections of her father's steely gaze survived the legacy handed down by accident of birth. "Dazhbog," she answers in kind.
Not quite the same as signalling him out as Robin Hood or an equivalent faerie tale, but the high ramparts of the Balkans retain memories of an older, prechristianized time. Dark valleys hold equally dark tales. A toothsome suggestion, though, as she leans down to pick up the jug of water and its glowing contents. "Fisheye is hungry," she explains. Rarely does she bother, but it's seen as significant as the portal behind her falls in on itself without a trace of its being. The plants acting as an anchorage for the other side of the Road resume their dormant state, tucked back into sleep of sorts after a murmur of thanks. She looks to the beer with a skeptical edge, and inclines her head. "Strong?" Because who wants a drunk witch? Does Clint dare? He might, though, and the caloric intake is fit to replenish that constantly burning rocket engine of her metabolism. She skims closer to him, her slender shadow cut crosswise over him and then settled into sitting. Even she can read the signs. Shooting the breeze — well, not really shooting it by Pietro standards — is on the menu.
"What'd you call me?" Clint asks through the side of his mouth and sporting a small furrow to his brow. But his lip twists up a little half-expecting it to be a curse of some type, or a compliment. Since each can easily come from the woman now settling beside him.
The blond archer in his blue jeans and black windbreaker shakes his head in answer to her question. "Nah," He takes a sip, tilting the bottle back with a twist of his wrist then rests it on his upraised knee. He tilts his head to the side curiously, observing the ethereal personification of Chaos, not exactly pondering the great mysteries presented by her. Or at least not one that'll be asked about in the ages. Instead he eyes her, and likely tries to figure out how much she might weigh.
Then he amends his answer, "Well, mebbe just stick to two or so."
Some quiet drinking is embarked on, but after the space of a few shared instants he tilts his head. "So should I ask about the…" He gestures with the bottle towards what she brought through that portal, and then in the vague direction of where that portal was.
"Dazhbog," repeats Wanda, the slewing ease of the Slavic language conforming to her tongue with an ease that English plaintively does not achieve. In part because English is the bastard lurking in the alley of languages, ready to club someone in the knees and rob its pockets of useful loan words. It's as much Portuguese as Old Norse, and she is still fathoming its depths or preparing to shiv the modern lingua franca in return.
"Better than Czernobog," she agrees with a smart, crisp nod. The bouncing darkness of her hair lies halfway between curled and wavy, slick enough to suggest her previous destination involved a wholesome quantity of water. Water she probably went prowling through. "Food for Fisheye, the Carptain." By way of an explanation it isn't much, but the three very unusual, luminous koi-like fish on a stand in the foyer need some kind of food. Apparently hot dogs and fish flakes don't cut it where they are involved. The jug isn't threatening anyone, but this is probably her idea of a milk run, the contents being roughly equivalent to a gallon and change. Nothing to be drunk while drunk, though.
One of the beers is taken, given a solid look. Then she pops the bottle lid off with difficulty, twisting and finally levering it open using a conveniently placed thumb. Gloves help for that. The next option was probably smashing the neck with a knife out of expediency. Perhaps, perhaps not. "Talk."
The archer's lips part as he offers a simple, 'Ah' as if her answers clarified matters for him. They do not. But he's willing to let it lie for now as his gaze distances once again. The experience of drinking is shared. Silently. Just occasional sips and quiet. Letting the time pass and their counsel kept.
Eventually Clint leans to the side in his chair, pressing one hand upon the arm of it to help him sit up a little straighter. His jaw tenses, tendons bunching as he murmurs to her. "You split your time between the two agencies, Wanda." He used her name, seriousness thus so implied.
The blond man turns those blue eyes on her and asks openly, "What do you prefer about each one over the other?" Assuredly he means SHIELD and the Avengers, though he is technically part of the various parts of SHIELD as well.
Nothing like mentioning ancient sun and moon gods. She raises the bottle to her lips with a practiced grace, the sort of careless arc suggestive of long familiarity or innate talent for measuring arcs and angles. Glass kisses her mouth and she allows the cool liquid to slip against her palate for an initial, though far from tentative taste. All in, no half measures, the nature of a witch. Water stirs in the clouds building up on the horizon, another raft of them launched in a greyish flotilla highlighted on the undersides by a sulphurous glow thanks to the furthest western boroughs. For now, the skies remain dormant in their need to wash New York from the face of the world.
His question, when he breaks the stifling silence, warrants a nod. They might be crouched together under ghillie suits or holed up on the side of a hill, prepared to snipe some unsuspecting target, and she wouldn't say more than three words. Laconic to the point of silence happily enduring for hours, there's no prompting or rushing Clint. Wanda simply doesn't need to. Her eyes narrow a fraction. The girl rooted to WAND(A!) as much as SHIELD takes another sip.
"Independence." A single world, carefully chosen after a glacial epoch, lands. "For SHIELD…" That one is harder. "Snacks." A beat. Another. It could be dead serious.
A burst of exhalation conjures forth a smile and what would almost be a laugh if it had a smidge more strength granted to it. He returns his attention to his drink and tilts it back for a swig that he lets continue… and continue… and then empty. The glass bottle is set on the flat tabletop with a dull clink then he reaches for another. The snap-hiss is heard as he undoes the cap then he returns to his slouch.
"M'havin' a hard time of it. I think."
And he seems content to leave it at that. No elaboration for a time. No explanation. Just those words floating into the night even as distantly a rumble rolls over them that speaks to the tumult of rainfall on its way.
Snacks are important. Anyone encountering Wanda /without/ snacks in the midst of a fight or waves of trouble might discover the risks of a glass cannon of her calibre starting to worry about hypoglaucemia. Do the Avengers have insurance or a way to handwave thefts of energy bars? One of them is usually stuffed away in the Quinjet next to a honey stick for instant fun. As it is, the mellow buzz of the beer has yet to dominate her starveling metabolism, and she doesn't have that gaunt, hollow look suggesting she might be appraising Clint to see if he, too, is something she can have for dinner.
Honestly, she's not a dinosaur.
His talent for downing drinks is something she doesn't possess. Call it a difference of age and not much else. Her fingers grip the circumference of the bottle, its chilly press into her palm articulating a solidity sometimes lacking in a world full of ephemera. Shutting much of her Sight isn't an easy thing to achieve, narrowing the aperture of its impressions, but she tries with the telltale lines between her drawn brows. "Hard?" A beat. "Fury asks too much? Do not know the people there? Or is it here the problem is?"
Unaware as to the potential appetizing meal he might well make, Clinton Barton is looking to the far skyline. Not the one that is creeping up behind them laden with the ill portent that storms are so well known for. No he look to the East and seems thoughtful as she speaks, asking her own questions of him.
"When I come here, it feels like a vacation in some ways." He looks over his shoulder, as if encompassing the entirety of his obligation to the spy agency, then looks back ahead. "SHIELD though. I'm not sure if I can maintain the spooky spycraft. S'been a long time. And I don't have the knack for it that Nat does."
He lifts a fingertip and scraaaapes a nail along the stubble of his cheek, scritching absently as he murmurs. "S'why she always took point at the investigations. And then I'd be there to wrap it up and take all the glory." His lip twitches a little.
"Now…" Without that partnership and without that support. "Meh." He leaves the rest unvoiced.
Bit bony. Sort of tough and rangy. Probably not too tasty for the average carnivore. Wanda's predilections are a far more difficult thing to decipher than a creature sixty six million years dead, even as she curls up in the chair, her knees perched higher and her legs crossed. Her heavy-lidded eyes trace the skies, as though she recognizes some deeper stirrings within those clouds and the harmonious balance of charged particles feeding the earth's atmosphere, the planetary spin her father manipulates with such ease an absent echo in her enchanted vision mayhap. Or it's just a pretty phenomenon to watch. How many people stop to really look at the sky?
"Natasha without it would be hollow," she murmurs after a painfully long pause. Not simply to construct the English sentences, but to give weight to what she does say.
The hint of his smile isn't reciprocated. Actually seeing her smile is rarer than eclipses. "You lack the other half. Balance," she says, slowly filling in those pieces in the time it takes for a bus to disgorge tourists even this late and pick up another batch to ferry to their hotel. This close to Central Park, it's never quiet. Privacy is an illusion. She raises her bottle, swirling the contents. Still so much.
"Then what, Dazhbog?"
"Don't think it's that." Clint says as he rolls a shoulder through its range of motion, the joint making an old crackle from the many times it's been damaged or dislocated. A small look is given to her as if she might already have the answer to what he's thinking. But she does not.
Instead he says, "I think I'm just gettin' tired. When I'm here we know where we stand. When I'm there…."
A deep breath is taken and then slowly allowed to escape in the form of a long low and deep rumble in the center of his chest. Another sip is taken from his beer, "There's bureaucracy, and people lookin' for promotions, and fucked up loyalties."
His draw hand lifts and pushes through his hair, then he scowls to himself and withdraws a small device from his ear. For him the world takes on a faintly muffled tone as he tells her, "One second." A twist is made to on of the small, terribly small indicators and the tiny red LED swaps over to green. He replaces the device back into his ear.
The different with her and, say, Shuri is that Wanda doesn't tend to eavesdrop on conversations so readily and easily. Headpieces and commlinks fail to automatically divulge their stories to her, contents encrypted against the chances of a rival or friendly agency overhearing. Thus she turns her head away for a moment, allowing a moment of privacy for Clint to handle the little object, turning it off or thrusting an arrow through it. One never knows how those moments turn out.
She puts the beer aside, her hands resting languidly in her lap. Gloved fingers curl inward as a protective gesture of sorts. No rush to make him speak, her silence endures without interruption to give Clint the benefit of the doubt.
More than surely, he will speak up when he's ready. All in its quiet, determined peace.
"Loyalties?" A mere rejoinder, when she gets around to it, since there might be an answer had in there some place to a lingering question. But nothing else.
"I don't remember if you were around when we were dealing with a large Hydra contingent." Clint adjusts the device with a fingertip, then promptly sees to forget it as he looks toward her. Another sip of his beer is taken and he nurses this one, letting it survive much longer than the last.
"They tried to infiltrate." And succeeded. And failed. Then he adds, "Though I don't mean just them. I mean people who are trying to use the job as just a stepping stone. Get it slapped on the resume. Move on. Or people just bucking for the promotion."
He shakes his head and flares one hand as if dismissing the whole thing as nonsense. "Anyways. Just different. Here we all know what we're about. There, not so much."
"I hunted them," explains the sorceress with a faint shrug of her shoulder. Her files, that so spontaneously up and delete themselves with depressing regularity, might have contained shards of that fact. Tracking through the Balkans to the Baltic, tiptoeing around the threats laced through the European theatre of espionage. Buenos Aires to Miami, following a grim backbone of activity goes with the territory. She gives an opaque look to Clint, the fairly flatlined opinion of the octopus organization evident.
His statement receives a nod. "Different missions. Here, save everything. There, do what they say." It's boiled down in terms of philosophy but without leaping flat out into Russian or German, that's the extent of the conversation between them. Not intended rudely, her observations merely given up for him to parse or toss aside. "Spies keep secrets. Avengers protect. Sometimes this is a same thing. Sometimes is rare."
There's a flash of lightning behind them, and then a closer roiling rumble of thunder that rolls over them. At first Clint seems to take no notice, just sort of enduring it as the growl of sound slips by. But then he looks toward her and gives a nod in agreement to the insight she's offered. "You're probably right."
But then he heaves a small 'heh' and slides one boot off the seat next to him. "Anyways, sorry about bending your ear. Usually I burden Thor with this kinda junk." That said he uses the remaining boot on the other chair to push himself and his seat back with a metallic scrape upon the rooftop lounge area.
He takes another long drink from his bottle then slips the empties back into the cardboard container. Another is withdrawn and offered to her, "You want another?"
Lightning is a calling card, though not for her. Wanda tilts her head back to assess slivers of barren sky devoid of stars, the brightness of the city's halo too strong to let them permeate through the gloom. Only that atmospheric lightning contends with their ability to perceive matters at hand. She almost sighs, attuning herself to the petrichor-laden air with a deeper breath. One widening gyre and she pries open her senses, looking upward for any signs of trouble.
Casting a net doesn't always bring results. Most hunts don't turn up anything. When they do, however, it counts. The witch's eyes gain a slight unfocused quality to them, and she slowly attunes herself into the urban environment. "No. I do not have a trouble with it." Percolating up, her Transian accent is a sonnet for the ears, so unusually blended. "Do you plan to leave SHIELD?"
Another salient question, really, as she gives Clint that errant glance from the corner of her eye. She shakes her head about the question of the beer, but takes it anyway. A sip and he'll get it back. Two and he'll be carrying her half-asleep down the stairs.
"Nah," Clint replies after a moment. Really maybe two. He rises to his feet with the creak of the chair complaining almost as loudly as he was. "Wouldn't know what ta do with myself." And as he says this he gathers up the six-pack and tucks it under one arm.
"I'll be around if we get a call." He starts to move back toward the stairwell alcove that leads into the mansion proper. "Just yell loud enough." As he retreats he'll wave over his shoulder, "Thanks, Wanda." And unless she stops him, he'll descend.