Vanessa & Thom | Friday evening

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Vanessa talks to an old friend about what comes next for her and Mág Ealga in the wake of the hit on them.

Thom walked out of the bathroom fully clothed, his damp towel in one hand and a handgun tucked into the waistband at the back of his trousers. He knew they weren't legal in New York City, but he'd be fucked eight ways to Sunday if he let some bleeding Americans break him of habits that'd kept him alive for longer than most in his line of work.

"Oi," he called, just to let Vanessa know he was about again, mobile. He was getting too old for this shite - or so his left knee kept trying to tell him. "Still can't believe you've a fecking floor all to yourself, girlie."

"Aye, it pays to defrost the ice queen rich girl, apparently. It's her place. I left Snow Valley, moved out of the place where they all lived and needed somewhere to go so she offered the penthouse up to me." She poked her head out over the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. "I've corned beef and cabbage courtesy of a tiny girl who habitually feeds people. Hungry?"

"Aye," Thom said, grinning. "Who's the tiny girl what feeds people, then?" Meandering over to the kitchen, he inhaled and then let a softer kind of smile settle over his face. "Smells good."

"Ea's girl, actually. Peaches has a mothering tendency with the feeding people. I'm trying to beat her out of the worst bits of it, but Laurie's an amazing cook." She grinned and more or less shoved an empty bowl into Thom's chest. "You, hold." Vanessa's grin widened in the way it did on the face of a mischievous child. Once she was sure he had a good hold on the bowl she started to ladle said corned beef and cabbage along with the broth into it.

"Mm..." Thom wasn't going to complain about having a bowl full of food in his hands, particularly not when he got to eat the food going into it. "Sounds like a fine girl, then. That where Ea toddled off to?" He was going to ask what bad habits Laurie might have, but then he found himself a spoon and decided that sampling the girl's cooking was a more worthwhile use of his time.

"Probably that or working. You know Ea. Might have to import Peaches to distract him long enough to stop working, actually." She wondered if she shouldn't get on that message relay sooner rather than later. It could wait for a bit. It was possible Eamon just wanted some time alone. Vanessa filled a bowl for herself and sat down across from Thom at the table. Eating in silence was nice, especially after the past week or so. Lex was great, but he did a worrying thing that caused this helpful thing and she just wanted him to shut the fuck up and be for a bit. Quietly. She probably got that from Thom. Her dad had been like that as well.

"Aye," Thom said after a few long moments. Half his bowl was empty - who really wanted to talk when there was food in front of them, anyway? "Importing the girl might be a good way've getting the boy outta his own damned head..." There was nothing disapproving in his tone, despite his words - it was obvious Thom just wanted Eamon to not disappear on them for too long. Not that he'd ever say as much, of course. That was the point of having people about who understood you - you didn't have to say things.

The silence lingered a little longer as he considered that. He was polishing off the last bit of corned beef and cabbage as he said, "Seems likely we'll not be doing much working for the next stretch. Shite's not near settled enough."

"You'll need more people in the crew to keep working," Vanessa noted from around her spoon. She was the picture of ladylike perfection. After chewing and swallowing she sipped at her broth. "Just the two of you isn't much of a crew and even if you two kept on it'd be totally different sorts of jobs half the time, aye? Sure the wars wouldn't change much but you'd have to work with freelance sorts and they can be dodgy and what not. You two think 'bout what you're going to do?" It was partly a question of whether or not they needed her to come back. She would if they needed her to. Vanessa had nothing else to do with herself anyway.

"We done some thinking, aye," Thom said, shaking his head. He eyed his empty bowl for a moment, but reached for his glass of water instead of getting more to eat. He'd give himself a chance to let it settle before deciding if seconds were necessary. "And we thunk it wasn't such a bad idea, laying low for a ways." His knee gave another twinge and he leaned back in the chair, letting his legs stretch out beneath the table. Giving Vanessa a smarmy sort of grin, Thom raised his brows and continued, "Got myself a particular lady friend of mine in Wales I plan on seeing in a few weeks. S'long as she doesn't decide to take her broom to me, o'course. What about you, darlin'?"

"What've you done to deserve her taking her broom to you?" The smarmy grin didn't help any and Vanessa gave him a thoroughly suspicious look. That look remained on her face until her bowl was empty. "I don't know what I'm doing. I left one job for another, decided the second only was mostly a fit and didn't fit in the most important bits so I left that, too. I'm a sort of on call substitute teacher over at the Xavier school for the gifted but I've no bloody clue what to do with myself. My mate who rents me this place thinks I should go girl detective and be a P.I."

"I might've promised to come by and see her last year and I might've forgotten it after Bogota," Thom said. "She might've tried to thwap me a good one the last time I came 'round. We'll see how this one goes, though." He considered what she'd said about being a detective. "What'd you have to do to get into the detective business?" She was good at the subtle work, infiltration. She had the touch for it that you needed to get through to people and things and God above knew she could find people. Tracking had never been too difficult for her, either. "You'd need a crew of your own for that, though, aye?"

"I don't qualify anyway. At least not in the state of New York where I'd pretty much either need to have worked for a PI for x-number of years or have been a cop." She shrugged and then slouched in her chair. "I know a bloke who could falsify records but," she trailed off. "I was thinking of sticking my real name on whatever I do next. No more fake names and lives, aye? You know everyone who knows me in New York who didn't work with me or date me thinks my name is Morgan?"

"Do they?" Thom asked, nudging his bowl away from the edge of the table a bit and raising his eyebrows. "Didn't know that, for my part. Seems it could be useful, but... if you're going legit, using your real name and shite, you'll need to be real careful what you're doing and where. What kind of work can this bloke do for you, with the false paper? And what kinds of work would you do if you decided to do it? Bodyguarding? Finding lost kids? Smaller jobs?" None of which actually answered his question about whether she'd need a crew of her own - and whether or not she had one. Might need to build something from the ground up. There were worse ways of going about things, of course.

"Not paper, but he could probably hack into any database I wanted and create the sort of credentials I need." She frowned at that, though. "But part of the point of using my real name was that it would be legit. I could probably do ne'er do well stuff under the radar if I needed to, but the point would've actually been to help people. Bodyguarding but, well, actually I'd given thought to setting up in District X, helping people there. You know how a bit over a year ago some mad mutant took over New York, declared it a mutant zone and gave everyone a time limit on when to get out? Aye, well, after that all the mutants relocated to this one neighborhood and people call it District X 'cause they're all there.

"Everyone in New York I know worked to take that bastard out. A mate of mine, a bloke who works for the FBI, put me in charge of FBI and NYPD snipes during that." She gave a little shrug. "That's the sort of shite I end up getting up to 'round here. My FBI mate enlists me to help in weird shite and crap like that. These are the sorts I'm mates with. So I was thinking smaller scale. Maybe more shady but with the heart in the right place, y'know?"

"Aye," Thom said, nodding contemplatively. "So you do a bit of shady shite right off to get things started - that'd be your mate with the papers. Gives you room to work later. And if he's as good as you say, then it won't come up after, will it? You're as legit as you can be without actually going in for law enforcement or something like that." His nose wrinkled at that - Vanessa knew what he thought of police officers, for the most part. Good people - wrong training. "Point being, you're not helping anybody, sitting on that pretty blue arse of yours, are you? There's a list three and a half miles long, darlin', of things you could be doing. If you wanna help people, get your feet under you, then build up the reputation you need to get better things so you can do your own work, aye?"

"Maybe. I don't know, I'm thinking about it. I'd rather not have to do anything shady. I don't really like the risk of it biting me in the ass later on. Aye, he's good and he'd probably do it for a minimal bribe, but if somehow it gets found out or someone checks into something that doesn't add up then it's my ass and I'm trying to find a better workaround than just falsifying the creds I need." Maybe that was horribly idealistic of her, but Vanessa thought that maybe if she could find a legit way of getting what she wanted that it'd be better for her in the long run. Right foot to step off on and all that, maybe.

"Maybe," Thom agreed, though he didn't necessarily see the point in being that idealistic. If you couldn't get started at all because of the red tape in your way, chances were you'd never get to the point where you could afford to regret the shady shite you did at the beginning. "Anything I can help you with, love? You've got credentials - could even make 'em sound better than 'mercenary.'" He thought for a moment. "We ran enough protection details, didn't we? Could call in clients and shite for references, maybe? Security contractor - now there's a pretty title, innit?"

"Aye, it's a pretty title. It's not one that will meet the requirements for a PI license. I might look into doing security work in the meantime. That I've definitely got the creds for and who wouldn't want someone who could literally blend in with the crowd?" Shapeshifters were so handy in some ways. It was just a matter of getting someone to trust a shapeshifter in the first place. Someone who could be anyone didn't really create an immediate feeling of loyalty in most people.

"Might could do," Thom said, frowning a bit. "What about the people you've been working with? What've they got to offer? Got a long name, don't they?" He tipped his chair back onto two legs, balancing as he thought things through. "What're the requirements they want you to have, then? Besides the law enforcement bit, I mean? Can your FBI friend vouch for you?"

"Oi, what did you not get about you needing to have been in law enforcement in an investigative field or have worked for a private investigator? It's not a vouch for system. Maybe it is somewhere else but it's not in New York state." She sighed. Thom was old school, mostly because he was old. A lot of things could have been done in his day because you vouched for someone. Strings could be pulled for mates but it wasn't like that anymore. Or at least it wasn't like that here. "There's nothing at Snow Valley, I walked away from them. I won't go back asking for anything." He, of course, didn't know what Snow Valley actually did. Vanessa would be keeping it that way.

Semantics.

Thom hated semantics. It was so much easier when a mate could say you did good work and that'd count for something. Or when punching the right bloke in the face when he deserved it could prove your point to people. Frowning, he said, "Right - start with the basics. You wanna help people, aye? Security work'd do that for you for a bit, so long as you don't get hired on with the wrong sort accidentally. Good in-between work. Solid. What's keeping you from working for a bloke, though, that goes and does the investigating shite? Just saying - you might be able to manage it long enough to qualify for whatever you want to qualify for." It annoyed him that he couldn't be more help than he was, but he knew when he was out of his league - and he was that, where this was concerned.

"Gotta work for said bloke for three years. I haven't got any work history beyond two years ago and I'm not even sure it's my real name on file as a teacher at Xavier's. Still, I was born, I grew up, was presumed dead and that only got cleared up a little over a year ago when I started to work for a mutant think tank. I'm better off going the security route and working from there, I think. I've been trying to get a handle on things and figure out a plan before I make a move." Plans hadn't ever really been her strongest suit if Vanessa was honest. She'd always been pretty happy to follow someone else's lead. Aleister and then Eamon had alleviated any need for her to make up her own mind for the big stuff as a mercenary. She could work independently, but she liked a bit of a lead, even if it was just a small one.

"That's the smart way," Thom said, nodding. He knew he'd've gone off half-cocked more than once in his life if he hadn't had somebody else to make the plans. "Are there other ways of helping people, besides security work and the like?" Maybe it was just that he'd been a mercenary for too long, but he was having trouble thinking of other things to do that'd be useful to the helpless types. He was much more the 'brandish a gun, scare off the arseholes, and take advantage of offers of grateful hospitality' sort.

"I...don't know?" Vanessa gave him a bit of a helpless look. She was best in a fight or with a gun. Give her bad men to kill and she could do it, that's where her skills laid. "I guess I could volunteer at shelters and stuff but I need a job and that doesn't pay. I've savings but they won't last forever." At least she was better with money than she was with occupational plans.

Letting the legs of his chair fall back so all four were on the floor, Thom puffed his cheeks out and considered Vanessa's options. "Righto, love." It'd be really nice if Eamon could just pop up out of nowhere and suggest something useful. That was what he kept the boy around for, wasn't it? He frowned, a thought niggling at the back of his head. "Contractors - military types. They can hire whoever they want, aye? Worked with a few, remember? They hire all sorts, mostly shady types who don't care too much about doing shite off the grid, as it were. Dishonourable discharges and all that. Get governmental... permission and things. You've the background for it, since your name didn't come up on any of our contracts specifically, just the group." He wasn't sure where he was going with that thought, but it was going somewhere. He thought.

"Government permission for...what?" She was confused. Maybe the old man had taken a knock on the head when she had been otherwise occupied in Romania.

"Government contracts to operate in war zones and shite," Thom said, frowning. "Dunno if that'd work or not." He shrugged again. "I'm shite at this, aren't I?" He offered her a grin. "You talked to Ea about it? He's better with plans than I am and we all know it."

Vanessa grinned and stood up, snatching up the empty bowls once she did. "Aye, you're totally useless at this." She said it quite affectionately, though. "I'll talk to Ea. I think he just wants to be alone for a bit so I'm bugging you with my thoughts instead." She rinsed the dishes in the sink and left them there to be washed later. With a a mischievous smile on her face she turned to face him again. "So, old man, you wanna see if you can keep up with a whippersnapper out in the forest hunting? I know somewhere they'll let us go out and take down a buck or two."

His grin widening, Thom pushed himself up until he was standing. "Aye, that'd do, I'm thinking. Good bit of distraction of all the shite my head can't manage, huh? Point and shoot, point and shoot - that I'm good at." Walking back toward the room he was using, he waggled his eyebrows a bit, then let a more serious expression settle over his features briefly. "Baby Blue, you'll manage your helping people, I've no doubt. And once you've got your plan, you'll let me know what I can do to help, aye?"

"Aye, da, I'll let you know. There's an archery and gun range nearby the bucks, too. For the record." She preferred to hunt with a bow. The one Manuel had gifted her with one year was her favorite over the crossbow. She'd make sure Thom had whatever he wanted to shoot with today, and then a few other options for the ranges if they felt like it. He was the one who taught her to shoot, to fight with a knife, to box. She knew he shared her tendency to shoot to let off tension and stress. They could both do with something to aim at that was tangible. Aye, and something that wasn't necessarily out to kill people they loved, too.