Amara and Bishop: Options (Backdated)

[x-bishop.livejournal.com]

Amara comes to see Amanda. She runs across Bishop instead and things get uncomfortable, then surprising.

Amara didn't often stop at the Brownstone to visit Amanda - she usually saw her friend at the mansion, if anything - but she'd had some free time thanks to a cancelled HeliX meeting, and so she'd headed over there to see if the witch was around.

Except instead of seeing Amanda, she ran into another familiar sight - one she hadn't seen in a long while.

"Bishop?" She asked, a tentative smile on her face. She hadn't really spoken to him since their argument months and months ago, and she'd come to miss her friend. She just hadn't known how to go about fixing what had happened between them.

Bishop looked up from the files on his desk. He closed them when he saw the woman and offered her a smile. "Amara."

"It's been a long time," she continued, the smile staying on her face. "How have you been?"

"Good." Bishop paused for a moment. He was at a loss about what to say. Their argument had been volatile. "How are you?"

"Busy," she said with a shrug. "There are never enough hours in the day, the usual." She paused, recognizing the awkwardness but not wanting to let it deter her, now that she was talking to him.

"I was going to see if Amanda was free for coffee, but if you're not too busy, would you like to join me?"

With a nod, Bishop stood and pushed his chair in. "That sounds fine. I could use a break." He kept a smile a little longer and brighter than he would have, trying to help battle the awkwardness as well.

"Great," Amara replied with a smile, determinedly ignoring the weirdness. Maybe if she did it enough, it would okay. Once they were outside she slid her hands into her pockets, and just... started babbling.

"I started working for Elpis," she started, figuring she might as well fill the silence with some sort of elaboration on her 'busy'. "And I quit working at 64 Square. It wasn't quit the same there without Adrienne, and I don't really think I'm cut out for working in fashion. I like - well, I like some of the clothing, but it's not something that particularly interests me. And the people at the office at Elpis are much nicer."

"You seem like you'd enjoy work helping people more than a corporate job." Bishop agreed. "I've started a detective agency with a few partners." He offered in return for conversation.

"Oh definitely," Amara smiled. "I've seen much good they do first hand, I couldn't not want to be a part of it." She looked up and over at him at his news. "Really? What sort of work do you do?" Amara honestly hadn't realized that detective agencies existed outside of movies and television... not that she would admit that to Bishop. "I mean, obviously, detective work. But what sort of cases do you take? And who are you working with?" Maybe if she asked enough questions, they could keep the discussion going for awhile before falling back into awkwardness.

"Vanessa, JP, Laura, Lex..." He rattled off idly. "I even have an assistant, Laurie. It's much easier on me then when I was a detective at NYPD. We pick up mutant cases that the PD doesn't seem to care to work on."

Vanessa. There was that name again.

"That sounds really great," Amara said, still keeping the upbeat note in her voice. "And it's going well? People are coming to you with their cases?"

Bishop nodded, heading toward the door with Amara, holding it for her politely. "They are. We're getting a good reputation in the District. We're the 'mutant cops.'"

Amara ducked her head in thanks before walking in ahead of him, heading to the counter to order her drink before glancing around for a free table.
"I'm not surprised," she said, glancing up to him. "It sounds like the perfect sort of job for you."

"We get to pretty actively help in a way I'm good at." Bishop nodded. "It probably is the perfect job for me." After ordering his own coffee, he followed Amara, politely pulling her seat out for her before sitting across from her.

Amara smiled her thanks before taking a seat, quickly taking a sip of her coffee as she tried to work out whether she was going to bring up... well, what she was about to bring up. Apparently she did, because when she put down her cup of coffee, she opened her mouth to change the subject.
"It's possible I may owe you something of an apology."

Bishop raised his eyebrows in response, his cup to his lips at the moment as he took a sip.

"When we fought..." She took a deep breath. "I still don't think you had the right to say to me what you did. It's my right to choose what I do, whether you agree with it or not. But..." Amara wasn't good at admitting when she was wrong, especially in circumstances like this. "You were right about me needing to leave behind the traditions of Nova Roma. I live in America now, those are the traditions I need to embrace."

When Bishop's cup lowered it revealed a large grin. "I'm not sure that apology after indictment is the American tradition." He set his cup down and looked at Amara for a moment. He was careful broaching the topic because he didn't want to reignite the argument.

"Oh, well," she grinned a little in reply. "There are some lines I will draw. I still hate fast food. And I don't understand football. Amongst other things." She paused. "And American beer is terrible."

The list of dislikes made Bishop laugh. "Do you have a list of things you're embracing too?"

"Not specifically," she said with a shrug. "But I'm actually... thinking about my future, what I'm going to do after I graduate from college. And trying to plan accordingly.

A grunt and nod were Bishop's listening tactics, encouraging her on as he sipped his coffee occasionally.

"I've finally settled on a major - I'm doing Anthropology, and next year I'm thinking about doing my honors thesis for it focusing on mutants - I'm still a long way off deciding on what exactly I want to focus on, but that's a project for summer. I've started working for Elpis, along with everything I'm doing with HeliX, so whatever I do do once I graduate, I want to be working with mutants somehow." She took a sip from her coffee. "And I quit the team."

"You never seemed like someone who would be content just punching it out over who's right." Bishop said supportively about her split with the X-Men.

"That's not exactly all they do," Amara said in defense of the team. "But you're right, it just wasn't... right for me, I suppose. I'd rather find other ways to be able to help mutants."

Bishop didn't argue what he meant, he just nodded. "Sounds like you've found a good way."

"I think so." Amara smiled, taking a sip of her coffee. "Looks like we've both found something we really enjoy doing."

"I've been here before, with a career I like. I always start looking for the next goal. I'm not good at that." Bishop confessed. He had always been career oriented and last time he felt as though he was where he wanted to be he quit everything and joined the mutant community.

"Maybe you could just focus that on energy on looking for the next case," Amara said with a smile. "It would be a pity for the mutants of New York to lose your services so quickly."

"That would be the normal holding pattern. Several more intense cases I'm very dedicated to followed by burn-out." Bishop laughed and returned Amara's smile.

"Sounds like someone is a workaholic," she replied teasingly. "I'm starting to think I'm good company when it comes to that."

Bishop raised an eyebrow as he took a drink from his cup, silently asking what she means.

"My list currently sits at you, me and John, and I'm sure if I looked a little harder, I'd find quite a few more." Amara was starting to wonder if there was just something about mutants that gave them extra energy to work ridiculously long hours and not go insane.

While he did know all the ticks to look for to see if a woman was interested in him, and even though he had been watching Amara for them, Bishop was much less patient in his personal life than in his professional life and he knew he was going to make a comment soon if he liked it or not. He was silent for a moment, not having much to say about workaholism, watching his company wonder about... something.

Amara looked back over to Bishop, a quizzical expression on her face. She could keep talking to fill the space, but there was only so much she could say before she started to babble, and she wasn't that good with babble.

"Have you had breakfast? Or do you have plans for dinner?" Bishop had a habit of being direct and sometimes abrupt. As she well knew, he didn't temper it when it came to his personal life.

"I have, and no I don't." Amara was a little puzzled by the abrupt change of topic. It hadn't quite occurred to her that Bishop would be interested in picking up where they left off. It had been a long time.

"Since you look confused, maybe I should be more clear? I'd like to take you out on a date tonight. I think you asked me to come get coffee in order to subtly clue me in on the fact you'd be receptive to the offer." Bishop laughed a little. "I don't care to use subtlety in my personal life, though. I think it leads to confusion and fights."

"I asked you to coffe because I owed you an apology," Amara replied bluntly. "I'm not very good with subtly." She looked at him with a considering expression on her face. "Are you going to be an ass about my upbringing again?"

Bishop laughed, seeming to not just appreciate the direct honesty but actually enjoy it. "I wasn't trying to belittle your upbringing or your country's culture however that doesn't mean I'm a moral relativist. Treating a person like property isn't right and every culture has that mistake in common at some point in their history."

"I think if you accused my father of treating me like property, he would hit you. And my father is a very peaceful man." Amara's expression had changed slightly, blanking out as she still didn't give him an answer.

"Maybe he would." Bishop nodded, trying to give a little without condoning the idea of arranged marriages. "And I don't know how he treats you."

"My father adores me," Amara said firmly. After the death of her mother, Amara and her father had become very close, and even though she'd been living in America for years, she still missed him terribly. "Why are you asking me? We haven't spoken in, what, over a year? You haven't made any effort to try to reconcile, and we have clearly clashing ideological differences."

"You were hanging onto heritage aggressively, I knew I couldn't get past that. When you said you were embracing different values I thought maybe you'd let this go some or try to accept my position a little more." Bishop shrugged, finishing his coffee. "I don't like Nationalism much, even American Nationalism. It makes people too willing to overlook a group's mistakes, if not embrace them."

"Nova Roma is -- was -- my home. It might have been fake, everything orchestrated by Selene, but for a long time, it was all that I knew. I'm not going to apologize for not wanting to let go of my heritage, it was important to me. Not all of it -- you might think that an arranged marriage is barbaric, but it's nothing in comparison to human sacrifice. I've seen what awful things people will do in the name of their god, I lost my mother and friends to their fanaticism."

"I'm sorry all of that happened, too." Bishop assented again, trying not to antagonize Amara, letting her have the debate for the moment.

"I'm not -- trying to make excuses. Or trying to talk either of us out of this. I'm just... surprised you're still interested." Never let it be said that Amara was any good when it came these sorts of things, but she was at least trying. She didn't want this to be a disaster again.

"I do surprise people sometimes." Bishop nodded in agreement.

"Yes," she said with a little bit of a smile. "You do." There was a long pause, while Amara thought. She didn't want to say no - but at the same time, she didn't know how fair it would be to say yes. "I would like to go to dinner with you," she finally replied. "But you should also probably know I have a date with someone else. I don't really... know how that will go, but I do like him." Amara had no idea about the etiquette of these situations, but she couldn't just say yes to Bishop without being honest about what was happening with John.

"A date for each of us so you can get more information seems fair to me." Bishop shrugged. It seemed like the most reasonable way to decide on a person's feelings.

"Alright," Amara agreed with a smile. "Dinner tonight it is. Pick me up at seven?"

She'd just have to make up her mind about them later.