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Backdated to the middle of January, after Sha-boom. Doug and Angie go on their well-deserved vacation. Most of it is spent being silly, but there is discussion of the events of Sha-boom.

Seventy degree weather in the middle of January would take some time to get used to. Marie-Ange decided that the appropiate amount of time would be about three minutes, of which one would be taken up getting Doug to double-check the temperature on his PDA just so she could be sure. The lack of humidity, and the lack of a crowd made the trip triply nice. All of the entertainment value of an amusement park, plus the added bonus of making fun of it, without the vast number of people packed into one location.

She sat on a bench, watching the trio of fairy godmothers from Sleeping Beauty pass by in what an announcer had called the "Parade of Dreams." and waiting for Doug to return from getting something to drink. As usual, the sketchpad was out, and the sketch in progress had cast Wanda, Sofia and Betsy as the godmothers. In far better, if still color-coordinated outfits.

If they ever found it, they would kill her. Well, Sofia would kill her. Wanda would laugh. And then kill her.

Doug chuckled as he set a coffee down on the bench for Marie-Ange before sipping at his hot chocolate. "Hm, I wonder which one would kill you first if they ever saw that," he mused with a nod at the sketch pad. Her humor had been extremely whimsical for much of the trip, and Doug enjoyed seeing her smile as she sketched.

"Betsy." Marie-Ange answered, almost immediately. She flipped the sketchpad back a page to show Doug the first sketch she'd done, where the outfits were not updated and the cone-shaped hats were still intact. Betsy was the only recognizable member of the trio, as the other two were yet undrawn. She took a drink of the coffee, which was surprisingly not-bad and closed the sketchpad. "I had considered drawing someone as Maleficent but I could not decide who."

"Amanda? Illyana?" Doug suggested, grinning. The drinks had been overpriced, but that was to be expected. The quality was an added bonus. He sat down on the bench and watched the tail end of the parade as it went past. It was nice to have a vacation, time to relax and do nothing important.

"Perhaps if I wanted to be cursed. Which I do not." Marie-Ange answered with a smile. "What do we want to do next?"

"Hm." Doug fetched out his map of the park and consulted it. "It's a Small World is closed for renovation..." For which he was grateful, as the ride was too saccharinely cute for one, and given his power, potentially annoyingly confusing. "We could go ride Space Mountain, we could go shopping in the incredibly kitschy shops, or..." His stomach rumbled, almost on cue. "...we could go get lunch."

"We have ridden Space Mountain -four- times, Doug." Marie-Ange said, in an affectionaly teasing tone of voice. She'd grown into a moderate taste for thrill rides, but several times in one day was more then enough for her. "I saw a Cajun restaurant by the Pirates ride. Perhaps they have a table? It said to get reservations early but there is almost noone here."

"My stomach wholeheartedly agrees with your suggestion," Doug said as they made their way to the restaurant. When they'd reached it and been seated, he stretched back in his chair. "This is nice," he voiced his thoughts from earlier. "Lord knows we needed a vacation after the past couple months." He shuddered slightly, remembering the bees.

"This feels so normal..." Marie-Ange said, poking at her food. "Out on a vacation, laughing and making fun and going on your roller coasters." She smiled wrly, and took a bite of food. "Except I suppose normal people our age would be in school right now, or just going back? Which is why no one is here."

"And instead, we..." ~Deal with flesh computers and Nazi bees and killing people.~ Doug completed the thought in the privacy of his own head, and flicked a glance at the other patrons. "There might be something to be said for normal sometimes, but I think after a while it'd get boring." He shrugged.

"Yes, exactly." Marie-Ange raised her glass of water in a mock toast. "I think." They'd been seated at a round table, and at this time of the day, in the middle of January, the Blue Bayou Restaurant in Disneyland was nearly empty. So it was easy for Marie-Ange to scoot her chair close to Doug. "Do you ever wonder if Remy was right? That this job would change us?"

"Yes and no," Doug said after thinking for a while. "I mean, for one, life is about change. Nothing ever truly stays the same. And besides, the things we see? They'd change anyone, I think." He speared a piece of sausage from his jambalaya (not even close to Tante's standards) and gestured with the fork. "But the rest of it, that whole part where he thinks the job automatically makes you broken? I don't agree." He shrugged. "At least, _I_ don't feel broken."

"I think I started out as broken." Marie-Ange's customary joke about her dubious grasp on reality was colored a little darker this time. "But I do not feel like I cannot function in society. Off-color drawings of Belle and the Beast aside. I really do think that they do it like that." Doug's resigned expression made her giggle. "I am just not sure I am going to be overcome with guilt. At least, not today."

Doug had read the report Angie had filed after their return from Adenville, about what she'd had to do to Ben DeRoy. He reached out and took her hand silently to squeeze it. It was good that she could giggle, and joke. He'd been a little bit worried about her, but she seemed to be handling things well.

"I keep thinking around and around in circles. I sat there for a long time trying to figure out if there was anything else I could do. And I could not figure out what else there was." Marie-Ange had already had most of this conversation with Remy, and would likely have it with Sofia once they got back. "What if there was? But I cannot think of what it could be." She squeezed Doug's hand. "And then I wonder what is wrong with me that I am -not- curled up in a ball and crying?"

"It's easy to second-guess yourself after the fact," Doug replied, still holding on to Marie-Ange's hand and brushing his thumb over the back. "And from what it sounds like, it wasn't a decision you came to lightly. I think maybe you're not curled up in a ball because you gave it careful thought and made your peace with what you had to do before you even did it?" The last part came out as something of a question as he watched her face carefully.

Marie-Ange talked while she used her piece of bread to catch some errant pasta sauce that had attempted to escape the edge of her plate. "I am not sure I have made my peace with it. I could not find another way to fix the problem." Not only was she not entirely comfortable coming right out and saying what she'd done, but doing so in a restaurant? At Disneyland? That just felt wrong. "It is more like, I have made peace with the fact that I am not sure I can make peace with what I did."

Only Marie-Ange could come up with such a convoluted sentence, Doug mused. But he understood what she meant. Acknowledging the necessity of some of the things they did wasn't the same as being completely comfortable with them. "Have you talked with Sofia about it?" he asked.

"You saw the extent of my conversation with Sofia. She sent me on vacation." Marie-Ange said after a bite of bread. "Which I am not sure how to interpret. Did she mean that I needed a vacation before this? Or that because of this, I needed a vacation? Both? Neither?" If she could have thrown her arms up in confusion, she would have. But doing so in the restaurant would have meant her very tasty bread would have gone off in all sorts of directions. "I talked to Remy. He was... typically Remy."

Doug shrugged noncommittally. Marie-Ange was overthinking Sofia's motivations, but that was par for the course for her. It didn't seem like she was carrying too much guilt about the events in Adenville, and he made a mental note to tell Sofia such on their return to New York. "So, dessert?" he asked with a smile.

Later that evening, there are footrubs and discussion of Marie-Ange's forwardness with "Joseph Crockett, Jr."

"What I do not understand is how I can hurt more after a day of standing in lines and riding silly rides then after a few hours of combat training with Wanda." Marie-Ange peeled off her remaining sock and wiggled her bare toes. Granted, it was just her feet that hurt, but the contrast seemed to make it all the more painful.

"Maybe it works different muscles, ones that you're not used to," Doug mused. He was a bit sore himself from all the standing around they'd done, but it had been worth it to let their hair down a bit. He smiled at Marie-Ange's wiggling toes. "Would a footrub help?"

In response, Marie-Ange gracelessly flopped backwards onto the bed and continued to wiggle her toes. "There is very little that a footrub would not help." She stretched her arms out over her head. "Maybe badly drawn on eyebrows. Footrubs do not help that. And that man. With the shirt. From the place."

Doug placed one of Marie-Ange's feet in his lap and dug in with his thumbs, grinning at the blissful expression on her face. "Could you be a little less specific there, Angie?" he asked wryly.

"I am distracted. By the footrub. Which you have nine thousand years to stop doing." Marie-Ange replied, between making quiet noises that anyone would have translated as "Ow, that spot is sore." and "Please don't stop.". Even without a mutant linguistics power. "Shall we call in for room service in the morning?"

Doug quirked an eyebrow as he continued the footrub. "My, my. That's a bit forward for you," he teased gently. "But yes, that sounds like an excellent idea."

Marie-Ange raised her head slightly and stuck her tongue out at Doug. "I will have you know that Joseph Crockett, Junior thought that I was quite forward with him." They'd confirmed fairly fast that no one remembered anything that had happened during the times that they had lost themselves to their 1950's counterparts. "I am surprised that Illyana has not teased you mercilessly about it yet. Although I suppose she may be saving it for blackmail."

"What can I say? Joseph Crockett Jr. doesn't know what he's missing," Doug replied as he leaned forward and leered comically. "I guess it proves that he's not really me, because if you did that to me, I wouldn't have any problems with it."

"None what so ever?" Marie-Ange asked, her tone light and teasing, but with an expression of concern on her face. "You would not think I was fast? Or easy?" She sat up, pulling her feet towards her and wrapping her arms around her knees.

"None," Doug told her seriously. "Joseph Crockett Jr. might have thought so, but the whole idea of 'fast' and 'easy' sort of went out with the Fifties, in my opinion." He placed a reassuring hand on her knee. "Besides, it isn't as though we just hopped into bed together first thing in our relationship."

"I suppose you have a point..." Marie-Ange conceded. For a while, she sat silently, resting her chin on her knees, expression thoughtful. After a few moments of quiet, she straightened, seeming to unfold her legs almost as she pulled her top off over her head.

Doug raised his eyebrows, even as he admired her figure being slowly revealed to his gaze. "And what are you doing, hmm?" he asked.

"Hopping straight into bed with you?" Marie-Ange said impishly. "You did say that you had no problems with my being forward?"