2013-01-06 Fury's Fine Dining Delivery Service

A quiet and peaceful evening, and Helena's at home instead of out patrolling. She's spent way too many quiet and peaceful evenings at home lately, and it's starting to drive her batty. She COULD write that off to the still damned-slowly healing damage to her right collarbone, but she's sick of making excuses for herself. 
An attempt to make her evening less peaceful and quiet turned out to be very much not peaceful, but not in the way she'd been hoping. One poorly timed tug from the grappling hook, a reflexive reach for the nearest section of fire escape with her dominant (right) hand, and her clavicle's back to doing its best imitation of red hot coals.
Now, a couple of hours later, she's back inside, back in her sloppy around-the-house clothes with Percocet downed, and a rather grouchy request of the Columbia Club called in. Curled up on her sofa and huddled under her favorite blanket, she holds an ice pack to her shoulder and waits for both the painkillers to kick in and her dinner to arrive.
The Columbus Club doesn't offer a delivery service. Then again, there are a lot of things it doesn't offer. Like most clubs that cater to a highly selective clientele, it's more a matter of what their members request than what's specifically on the menu. Veal piccatta isn't on the menu, either, but if you've earned the respect of the Columbus Club then they'll go out and murder the calf for you.
At least, that's the way it /used/ to be. Now, what with the shake-ups and the new out of town management team, the old ways are falling by the wayside. It used to be a, "Sure, Ms. Bertinelli. We can do that for you. Giancarlo will be out there in twenty minutes, yeah?" Now it's, "Oh, yes, we'll have Pronto Delivery bring it out to you. They're our exclusive delivery service provider." No 'Ms. Bertinelli' anywhere in it, and the Columbus Club now has an 'exclusive delivery provider.'
How the mighty have fallen.
In twenty minutes flat there comes a rapping at the door. "Pronto Delivery for a Signorina Helena Bertinelli?" comes the voice from the other side. It's a man's voice, an older man's at that: there's a hint of gravel to it. "Got what smells like a chicken carbonara and a bottle of something called 'grappa'?"
Helena Bertinelli startles awake from the half-doze she'd fallen into and scrambles a bit clumsily to extricate herself from her blanket. "Uh, yeah! Be there in a second!" She finally gets to her feet, drops the ice pack on the coffee table, and shuffles over to answer the door, pulling the cash from where she had it stuck to the door with a magnet as she unlocks and opens the door partway.
On the other side of the door there's a nondescript fellow who's pretty much indistinguishable from anyone else on the street -- except for the fact he's big, like he hits the weight room often. A faintly military mien suggests that he's part of the legion of soldiers home from the wars unable to find work in the current economic climate... except for work as a delivery driver, apparently.
He doesn't look over at the door as it opens partway: instead he keeps his eyes down on his clipboard. He reaches out with one hand to offer a plastic bag of Styrofoam food clamshells, and once that's taken he uses the free hand to fish out a pen from his breast pocket. "Need your signature, Signorina Bertinelli," he says quietly, handing the clipboard and the pen over next.
Helena Bertinelli actually doesn't question the need for a signature when she's planning on paying in cash, a sure sign of an oxycodone-muddled brain. Holding the money in her right hand, she takes the food containers in her left hand and turns to set them on the small table just inside the door before turning back to take the clipboard. "Thank you." She's muddled enough even to start trying to sign her name with her left hand, frowning a bit as it's not as easy as she's accustomed to. It's at this point that something else filters slowly into her brain. The only person -- including everyone at the Columbia -- who has ever called her 'Signorina' is... nah. Just her imagination. She shuffles everything around so she can finish signing her name correctly, not even trying to hide a wince as her shoulder twinges noticably past the painkillers.
"Signorina," the deliveryman says patiently as he accepts the clipboard back, "you look like you need a doctor." He removes his hat, revealing short salt-and-pepper hair cut to an almost military length. Then he reaches into a pocket, pulling out an eyeglass case and extracting a pair of extremely low-power lenses -- they might just be plain glass, in fact -- except that the left lens is blacked out. He dons them: it's not quite as iconic as his eyepatch, but it's certainly no less effective.
"Signorina," Colonel Fury repeats quietly. "You look like you need a doctor. Would you like for me to arrange one for you?"
Helena Bertinelli watches Fury shed his disguise and then registers his mention of a doctor. She sighs the sigh of the very much put-upon, leaning her forehead against the edge of her front door. "Oh, for fuck's sake. The last thing I need is ANOTHER damned doctor." While she doesn't invite Fury in to her apartment, neither does she slam the door in his face.
Not being a vampire, Fury has absolutely no trouble crossing over the threshold and into Helena's apartment. "Maybe one who's a little less preachy than Tompkins," he suggests once the door's shut. "Up to you. You've been getting beat up a good bit lately. Figured I should pay a visit and see what's up with that."
Helena Bertinelli really can only manage an annoyed frown at Signore Fury's just barging on in to her apartment. "I've had a shit past few months," she tries to explain away with a one-shouldered shrug. "Kinda par for the course anymore."
"Yeah, well. Do better." It's a cold statement, but exactly what one might expect from a man whose entire career has been spent sharpening his edge. "Did you ever get the rest of your kit together, replacements lined up, all that?"
Helena Bertinelli recoils slightly from the harsh retort as if slapped, causing her to miss the second question completely. "Screw you." She brushes past Fury to head back to her sofa and her blanket and her ice pack, dinner also pretty much forgotten despite the aromas starting to fill the room.
"They say he's a myth, you know. Ghost story. A violent little fable criminals tell each other. But you know." He walks over towards the sofa and takes a seat at the end of it -- not in physical contact with her, and not encroaching in her physical space.
"Whoever he is, man like that doesn't get to where he is by giving answers different than mine," he continues. He opens up one of the Styrofoam boxes, transfers the contents onto a paper plate, pushes food around with a fork briefly to make it look slightly more appealing than 'food dumped on a plate'. The fork is stuck in the dish and he hands it over towards her.
"He must give you a lot of that, too. A lot of 'do better'. But he ain't all that big on helping you become better, is he? Makes you feel like you're not good enough, like you're never going to be good enough. Means whenever anyone else tells you to do better, you lash out at them... because you really want to tell him off, and you can't."
He's quiet for another moment, watching her. "When was the last time he offered to take you to a doctor, Helena?"
Helena Bertinelli sits there and grumps until the plate is stuck under her nose. Then she frowns up at Fury. "Who the hell are you talking about? The BAT? He doesn't say jack shit to me unless he has to. I'm just some wild card vigilante who's too violent for HIS taste. And, he's the one that dumped me off at Thompkins', and for all I've heard since then he might as well have gone and drowned himself in the Crimea River." She does finally take the plate, though the food ends up getting shoved about some more. She's too annoyed (and honestly, a little too whacked out on the Percocet) to really have any real appetite.
"Stop talking," he says quietly. "You're drugged to the gills and you're saying more than you should. You just admitted to knowing him, told me that he and Tompkins are close. If you want to say this while you're sober, that's fine. But don't say it right now. Not when you'll lose respect for yourself in the morning for saying it."
He's quiet for a few more moments, giving her the opportunity to eat without having to worry about talking. When he does speak, it's still in that calm, straightforward tone of his. "I've got this speech I've rehearsed for about fifty years, about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys and all that. I've got a soft spot for misfit toys. Always have. When I was in the Army there were two kinds of soldiers: the ones who fit in well, who did it the Army Way, who knew the rules and regs and took them to heart and obeyed and were good little cogs in the giant Green Machine... and the soldiers I bled with on Heartbreak Ridge, or at the Falaise Pocket, or Salerno, or Remagen. The Nazis had their perfect Prussian ranks and files and leaders with fancy noble titles. We had a bunch of mongrels from Brooklyn and Hell's Kitchen and Chicago and Albuquerque. I always bet on the misfits. I always bet on the mongrels."
He lets it sink in for a moment, and then -- "You could be the kind of person I'd bet on, Helena. You."
Helena Bertinelli eats, though does so slowly and listlessly, as if she's only eating to keep Fury from force feeding her. She studies Fury for a long moment after she finishes talking about misfit toys, then asks in a still slightly surly tone, "You're calling me a mutt?"
"Ain't the first time you've been called a bitch." The corner of his mouth quirks upwards ever-so-slightly in a smile. "I'm saying that I got no use for the perfect people who never screw up and who succeed at everything they try. I got a ton of use for the people who get in over their heads and keep going anyway."
Helena Bertinelli hmphs, though whether it's an amused sound or something else is a bit vauge. "Who are you accusing of never screwing up? Or... ohh. You want to get dirt on the Bat, go ask him yourself. I'm not a patsy, and I'm not a spy."
"If I wanted dirt I wouldn't have told you to stop talking," Fury points out in that maddeningly reasonable tone of his. "What I'm telling you is -- you deserve better than you're getting. Maybe even better than you're getting from yourself. It ain't the perfect people who do great things, Helena. It's the flawed ones."
He rises to his feet then. "You're hurt, and you're stoned, and I shouldn't stay long," he finishes. "I'll let myself out."
"I am NOT st..." Wait, yeah. She is. Helena sighs again. When will she stop being pegged for the dingbat that she is? "Oh, wait, do I still need to pay the Club for my food?"
"I took care of it," Fury answers from the door, standing in it and looking back towards Helena. "Don't worry about it. I'll be in touch, Helena. Look after yourself. Heal well."
 
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