2012-10-16 No, She Never Knocks

No matter what actual time of day it is, it's Awkward O'Clock. It's also Somewhat Drunk O'Clock, edging around the dial toward Oh Dear Thirty. The flat that Romany's backtracking researches led to, which is under the name of Carl Corey, is not in an impressive building. It's in an old five-storey walkup with narrow, ill-lit halls and half-sinking stairwells, and the hall windows are painted shut.
3C has television sounds coming from it.
And because Romany is, after her fashion, a polite elder sister ... the familiar cough announcing that the door is open to the hall and someone is standing just inside it?
It doesn't come till the onset of a commercial break. Or, at the very least, end credits.
And yet, the polite cough is still unexpected enough to send the futon's occupant tumbling, and then scrambling to keep cover-- it's like three whole seconds later that the scarecrow of a man's realized if someone wanted to kill him he'd be dead by now. So then it's horrible sticking-up hair first, then bleary blue red-rimmed eyes, which take a moment to focus properly. When they do, it's pure disbelief. "The *#$@. Don't you ever knock?"
"Thought I'd surprise you," the tall woman in the improbably purple jacket replies. She reaches out with the hand still holding a lockpick to nudge the hall door the rest of the way closed. Click. "Besides, if I did, you'd be convinced I was some sort of Chaosian infiltrator." A deliberate momentary survey of the room. "Glad to see you're not babysitting. Was worried for a moment. Couldn't think of any other good reason you'd have American television on."
"You *are* a Chaosian. *#$@ infiltrator," mutters Pete, pulling himself back up onto the futon and fishing for the remote. Speaking of fish-- it /does/ currently smell fishy in the flat; the source is obvious with very little investigation. A drying-out dish of some leftover canned tuna on the floor in front of the sink, next to a half-full bowl of water. "It's just noise." Just noise-- the debates. "A lot of *#$@ing noise. If you're in you might as well come in the rest of the way. What are you doing here?"
Gray-blue eyes gloss right over the tuna and water, without catching or questioning. Romany picks her way across the floor with the simultaneous ease and caution of long habit. One never does know what might be there, possibly including a girlfriend. "Saw your photo in the paper. Wondered what on Earth you were doing in Gotham, of all places. Thought 'really, that can't be good.' Decided I'd have a look for myself."
"I was there with a friend," says Romany's little brother, finally finding the remote, shutting the television off. It probably would have been a better idea to leave it on. Background silence is too much like taking things seriously. "She was nervous. I was trolling. You know you can't break into the Helicarrier like this, right? I'm pretty sure your broom's stuck in customs." He's slouched further into the futon, and is staring at the window absently. His hand, ditching the remote, fishes at the side of the couch to pull up a half-gone bottle of lighter flu-- err, Cutty Sark.
"Wouldn't try to bring a broom through customs. Not now, anyhow. All the registration nonsense. That entire business will fall apart as soon as someone realizes that registering anyone with a claim to any special ability will require every evangelist in the country to have their DNA in the database. Also, Catholic priests, but really, this is America, it's the evangelists that people will pay attention to." Romany doesn't seat herself during this commentary; she stays standing, but lets herself lean a shoulder casually against the wall. It's like sitting. If you're slightly mad.
It's like sitting if you don't want what's on Pete's futon on your purple whatever the hell it is. Perfectly reasonable. Utterly not worth comment. Like tuna. "God damn you for making me try and think about what sort of arguments they'd use," the twentysomething grouses, uncapping the bottle and taking a swig straight from it. "Anyroad. Not in Gotham, really. Wouldn't want to -live- there. Just go there when I need a look at 'it could be worse'. It's absurdly emo there, I don't even." Just talk, talk, talk. Talk talk. Fast and absent, words falling out of his mouth like he's talking just to listen to something other than his head. "Except every *#$@ing time I go there I get blown up. It's honestly not what I go there /to/ do -- I'm not suicidal -- I'm not. I'm just-- on mandatory leave. Never know what the *#$@ to do with myself."
"It's Gotham. Energy flows around there look like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Bit like your hair at the moment, really." Romany gestures with her free hand; glances at the lockpick still in it with arched eyebrows, as if wondering what it was doing there, and tucks it back into her pocket. "Mm. If you knew what to do with yourself, I daresay you wouldn't need the mandatory leave. Must have been a nasty bit, if you're spending time in Gotham to get out of having to be in your head with it."
"*#$@ing was. Wasn't even the worst I've done. I agreed it was necessary. We got information we wouldn't've had otherwise, information 'at might stop an invasion, and if it don't, at least save a few lives..." Pete trails off, looks away, looks at the window again. And he re-caps the bottle, letting it fall to the futon next to him. He absently pats his shirt pocket, takes out his cigarettes, fishes one out, clumsily lights it after a couple of tries. Buzzy vague deliberation of motion. "Director didn't agree it was necessary. And who knows, maybe they'd've pulled a telepath out eventually."
Sometimes a thoughtful silence is even harder to deal with simply because it's thoughtful.
"You justified it was necessary, you mean," Romany observes finally. "Can't have agreed on it, when you don't even agree with yourself on it now."
"No, I /agreed/. This is a case of 'just following orders' and 'swallowing someone else's justification'," the younger Wisdom says sharply, sitting up and twisting around in his seat, bloodshot eyes meeting his sister's. "This is a case of 'I had a choice and could have said no and thought someone else knew better'. It's a case of 'superior officer saw imported black ops agent and decided to use the handiest tool to solve a problem quickly', and that *#$@ing /tool/ not putting his foot down. And now that I know exactly what sort of organization I'm in - the kind that does *not* tolerate torture - /finally/ - it's because *I* *#$@ed up, *I'm* the one who did it, *I'm* the one who came here from setting bloody *fire* to the credibility of two MPs and a Peer and sinking two agencies into the *#$@ing North Sea, brassing about being the *#$@ing whistleblower-- and then cut *bits* off an alien shapeshifter-- and then it told us the truth-- and the truth is it's /got her inside it/--" And through the last bit, he's half-curling, half-cringing, cigarette crushed in his hand and his own fingernails digging into his skin; his eyes shut tight and he ducks his head and turns his face away, pressing its side into the ashy top of the couch. "--and-- I--" And nothing.
Gray-blue eyes calm through the perennial lenses, meeting his and not looking away. Calm as patient as the sea. No interruption. No turning away.
And that's what makes it worse, isn't it?
And nothing, then, for seconds. Not until there are footsteps. Two taken away.
... and two taken back, and an ashtray slid matter-of-fact beneath that crushed cigarette. Not to catch the ashes; just because the futon is not necessarily fireproof.
No words. No contact. But he's not being left on his own, either.
"--and how do you move on from that? She's a *#$@ing barista, Romy, she's not a-- they took her and-- experimented. And took her body. And her mind. And I thought-- I was hurting /them/. What /did/ it. But she's *in* there. And that's just it. This *#$@ed up excuse for reality-- you never /know/. Why the hell did she pick *me*? Why the **#$@* did I agree? Why--" The words don't come easy when your mind's racing faster than your alcohol-numbed muscles can cooperate. The words don't come easy for this sort of thing anyway. The fact that it's a 'sort of thing' makes it worse still. Pete's basically in a ball of self-loathing now, folded in on himself, crescent-moon semicircles dug into his flesh from fingernails. "I can-- understand-- why my partner ditched. Don't know what the Widow was thinking, assigning him to-- no I know, I know, she saw what I thought I was, not what I *am*--"
"There's one good question in that, you know." Calm, the way Romany's almost always calm, the way that takes everything that happens as simply something that happens. Not detached -- but examining, and taking in, and moving on. "Why did you go along with it? Seems to me that's something you'll need to have a look at, if you intend not to be doing it again." Which he hasn't said in so many words; but everything else about him is trying to scream it.
There's a tugging at the futon, just a little, and then weight over it. Blanket over ick. Romany on blanket. Sitting next to him.
"I don't-- know. Maybe I do," comes Pete's muffled voice from where he's rested his face against the dirty cushion. "Guesses. Guessing. I was really angry. I found -- that -- wearing her skin, hurting her girlfriend. And stopped it. And it wasn't-- there was another one, another agent found-- also disappeared someone. We thought it was impersonations. The people were missing. We thought they were dead. I was furious."
"You were furious," Romany muses quietly. "You wanted to do something. To save them if they were alive, to keep anyone from getting away with it if they were dead. And you convinced yourself in the moment that your superior was right, that there was no other way, that that was what needed doing; and who else would do it?"
Silence for an instant.
"That can't be helping. Usually, you trust your anger to point you in the direction of something that /does/ need to be set on fire. Now everything's all on end. If you can't trust righteous fury, who can you trust?"
There's no answer; no answer to the summary, no answer to the question-- it sounds rhetorical. Except then Pete makes a sound that's almost a hiccough, then a stifled, sick little laugh. He unfolds himself enough to plant his feet back properly on the floor, then runs his hands roughly through his hair and leans forward to prop his elbows on his knees. He goes fishing for another cigarette, and this one's out and lit a lot easier. "Fury."
The blank little blink that Romany gives her brother is not worth the price of admission, but it's definitely worth holding on to to savour later. "Not the answer I'd had in mind," she admits after a moment, "but I trust it means something to you."
"Director Fury," Pete says, breath held back to savor a lungful of smoke, words chopped off for it. He waves a hand in the air, leaving a trail of blue-grey in its wake, then blows out away across the room. "I can trust him. Nearly threw me off the helicarrier my first week in." He coughs, a hollow booming sound, then rubs at the side of his face somewhat viciously with the heel of his empty hand. Reconstruction of armor. "Was a terrible answer. But he put me on leave 'til I told someone about it." Someone he trusted, someone whose opinion matters to him. But oh Romany doesn't need even more smug, does she. No sir. "Sorry. What answer had you in mind?"
"Puts you back in the position of depending on a superior's judgment, doesn't it." Not a question; not an objection, either. Another observation. Romany's prone to those. "And you mentioned telepaths. If you're dealing with that sort of thing, then you won't always be able to trust you're dealing with him. So. It'll do for a crutch, little brother." It's only now that his armor's on again that she sets a hand on his forearm briefly. "But sooner or later, you'll need to work out a way to walk on your own again." 'Without *#$@ing over helpless victims' isn't said out loud. Pete's good enough at filling that in without flinching away from it.
God knows it's been running through his head enough on its own it doesn't especially need filling in, either. "That sort of /bullshit/ yeah," Pete says, reaching the arm that doesn't have a hand on it to ash into an empty takeaway carton, since the ashtray's all the way over there where it was convenient less than two minutes ago, where Romany put it. He's so quiet, then, the sound of the traffic outside is louder. "I want to quit. I want to just stop. But that doesn't do /anyone/ any good. I wasn't drunk or insane, by the by."
"Pete," Romany sighs, and he knows that tone; but it's not a tired one. "Even if you quit, you wouldn't be quit. Look at Gotham." Where there is a baby lizard with a chance to grow up, and possibly become a hot teen lizard, or a lizard genius, or just a quiet baker or chef with the advantage of not /having/ hair to fall into the soup. "Speaking of which. When /was/ the last time you had a nodding acquaintance with a shower?"
"...which, the bomb or the R.O.U.S.es?" the patient woman's brother asks obstinately, just barely managing not to jut out his chin. He shifts himself on the couch, then hauls himself to his feet and scratches his stubbly chin with his cigarette hand, managing to get the smoke in his mouth while he does it-- and then takes it out and blows pollutant back into the air overhead. He looks down at Romany and looks peevish. "Or the claymore mines in the stairwell? Which, by the way, you should meet her. The witch girl. I've no doubt you'd get on. You're both mad." He starts clomping over to the sink, Completely Ignoring the shower question.
"Depends on the sort of witch," Romany replies, back to imperturbable now that Pete's gotten back to cranky and capable of motion himself. "If she's likely to go on and on about crystal energies and the healing powers of light, that's something else altogether. Unless, of course, she can actually shine on people to heal them, which can't be ruled out these days." Likewise, there's no ruling out the possibility that the sink might be Pete's shower.
"Well she didn't /shine/, unless she did and I was too out of it to notice-- she fished me out of the... whatever the hell happened up there, which I still don't even know," Pete says, rolling his shoulders, then knocking over the catbowl of water. He grimaces, sticking the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, then bends to pick it up and stick it in the sink. The tuna's not about to spill, so obviously it's left there. Water running now. Maybe he's doing dishes. He talks out of the corner of his mouth. "But she does magic... things. With things. Actually rather nice, she's the one I went to that stupid thing with, moral support and la. The thing what got bombed in Gotham. The one on the news, that is. If you're going back home, maybe you can take the *#$@ing pixie dust she's still holding for me."
"Wouldn't dream of it. If I did, you might actually have a happy thought while I was gone, and miss out on your one chance to use it." Somehow, Romany manages to say all of that with a perfectly straight face.
"...bint," snorts Pete after a second, plucking his cigarette out again and giving Romany the hairy eyeball over his shoulder. "I'm not joking, though. *#$@ing Fair Folk got lost. Some artefact or other called them up, mate of mine shot it, turned into tinkerbell dandruff. *I* have no use for it. It doesn't belong /here/. *She's* probably got it in a sock somewhere." Cig goes back in mouth, and-- he's /doing dishes/ what the hell. "You sticking around, I mean."
"Never been to America," Romany comments thoughtfully. "Any number of interesting things to have a look at. The Cloisters. Gotham. The secret temple Dad is convinced is built under the Washington Monument. Be a shame to go to all the trouble of getting through Customs just to take myself off again." None of which has anything to do with her brother's state of mind, of course. Which /must/ be off-balance; he's doing dishes. He /has/ dishes.
To be fair, they were there. None of the things in the place even look like the sort of things he'd pick to lift out of university dumpsters. Plus, he undoubtedly gets paid enough to actually /buy/ things. But. He is doing them, yes. Her answer gets a noncommittal sound out of him, and another razorish glance goes over his shoulder. "Right. Well. Do me a favor and don't date anyone who wears their knickers on the outside in front of anyone I know."
Romany's eyebrows arch. And there is nothing, at all, else to be said about that.
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