xp_logs | Doug and Wanda

Backdated to February 3rd. Doug is working late in the office, and Wanda comes by with alcohol as something of a peace offering, and the suggestion that maybe they can at least start to mend the broken fences between them.

Working late nights and odd hours wasn't unusual around the office. In fact, it was probably the norm instead of an oddity. But that night, Wanda hadn't stayed behind due to a project or trying to track down a reluctant source. She was working, yes, but it was certainly things that could have waited for a decent hour in the morning, preferably after a good breakfast. Tonight she had another goal on her mind as she carefully closed down her computer and scooped up the bottle of scotch she'd brought in with her that morning. Two shot glasses perched carefully on the top as she made her way from her area in search of her target.

Doug was keeping a combination of very early and very late hours, partly because he had plenty of work to try and distract himself, but also because he didn't feel up to seeing his coworkers in the mornings and evenings as they entered and left the office. The feeling of being alone, even in the brownstone and office where his coworkers were all around, was starting to weigh on him.

It didn't surprise her at all to find Doug at his desk at this late hour. Just because she hadn't been talking to him outside of the necessary interactions didn't mean she had lost track of him altogether. The entirety of the office tended to know roughly where everyone was at a given time - it meant emergencies could be handled at a decent rate of speed. Despite how long the tension had lasted between Wanda and Doug, and everyone else, she didn't bother knocking. The scotch was set down gently on the corner of his desk as she took command of the seat across from him.

Doug's knee-jerk instinct was to lash out and keep whoever it was at a distance before they even sat down. But he couldn't muster up the energy for it. Besides, it was Wanda, and she'd brought scotch. "Hi," he said quietly, the pain of the past several days obvious on his face.

"Mr. Ramsey." Before, the 'Mr. Ramsey' thing had been said in part amusement, part teasing and affection. After the Hellfire Club stunt, though, it had turned into a way to keep Doug at a distance. Having grown up with Pietro, Wanda had grown very good at showing disdain and she knew Doug had felt every ounce of it. Now, though, the words hovered in a sort of limbo between the two - he wasn't the only one that was tired. "You look like you need a drink."

Doug scrubbed at his face, as if he could magically remove the weariness he was feeling somehow if he tried hard enough. "That sounds...thank you," he said with a weak smile.

Removing the shot glasses from the top of the bottle, she placed them on the side so she could actually open it. Liquor, food and clothes were the things in Wanda's life that she truly indulged in; growing up poor enough that you either begged, borrowed or simply stole everything you owned had only made her more than determined to enjoy what she could, when she could. It had simply been her good fortune to find employment over the years that had allowed her such indulgences.

The heady scent of scotch filled the room as she poured it neatly and gently passed over one of the glasses. "How is your sister doing?" Wanda asked suddenly.

Doug knew it was a cardinal sin with scotch as good as Wanda favored, but he tossed it all back and let it burn down his throat at the question. "Physically? Fine," he answered, his voice roughened by more than just the scotch. "She's gone home, and she's transferring somewhere on the West Coast. She wasn't very interested in telling me where." His mouth twisted into a self-mocking smirk. "For some reason, I'm not really one of her favorite people right now."

"She is family, she will come around eventually," she replied, wincing slightly at his treatment of the scotch. But she did stretch out to pour him another one all the same. "I think - getting away from the city will do her some good. Time and space, Mr. Ramsey, are the only two things you can give her at this point. Besides the most important thing you already gave her. Saving her life."

Doug had caught the wince, and treated his second glass much more kindly than the first, sipping at it. The warm glow of the scotch was helping to smooth all the jagged edges that were everywhere in his life at the moment. "It was my fault her life was in danger in the first place," he muttered.

Wanda shrugged as she took a linger sip of her own drink. "Well, yes." She sighed, then, and rubbed her forehead. "As much as I hate to say it, though, I could also see my father kidnapping your sister for his own means, had you stayed with the X-Men. Or, currently, one of the men and women we have dealt with in the past since coming to this office. Your ties with the Hellfire Club are dangerous, Douglas, more so perhaps than most of the dangers we have faced in the past. But family and friends have always been a weakness that could always be manipulated."

She stared into her drink for a moment. "It is more, I think, that you were wearing your own face for this. Not a code name, not an alias. But as Douglas Ramsey, Emma Frost's emissary. And with a face comes a history."

Doug nodded thoughtfully. "The Black Court leaned on Adrienne pretty hard as well," he said. It helped to think that he hadn't been the only one attacked through his family. Plus, Wanda reminded him that his family issues could have been worse - at least he wasn't related to a supervillain. "I guess it comes along with the stakes we work at," he said musingly, taking another sip of the scotch.

"Plus, while Emma may care for you on a personal level -" Of course, that was all open to interpretation. After all, reading Emma Frost was nigh on impossible. "- the court itself does not. They take their love of the chess game far too seriously. And all pieces can end up being pawns regardless of their title." Wanda looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time since she'd come into the room. And perhaps since she and Doug had faced off against each other. "Is it worth it? This Hellfire venture? For all that you've lost or struggled with since?"

Doug pursed his lips, giving serious thought to Wanda's question where he would have quickly answered in the affirmative previously. He'd been feeling the damage that everyone questioning his loyalties had caused rather keenly. But even with all of that...

"It's funny, a lot of people used to wonder why Angie and I stayed together," he said in an apparent non sequitur. "She never talked about it much, but she was always afraid of becoming too cold, too detached to relate to people." He'd lost track of the number of nightmares he'd woken her from, nightmares of walking across the corpses of her friends and coworkers without a second glance. "She needed some measure of normalcy. Someone to keep her human." Of course, then she'd abandoned it all to go do...whatever it was she was doing. Perhaps he hadn't been enough, in the long run.

He quirked a wry grin. "She's not the only one who needs reminding." It was obvious now that he was referring to Emma.

She returned the smile with a small one of her own and then it was her turn to think quietly for a moment. Wanda studied the liquid in her glass as she tilted it back and forth slightly, disquieted for a moment. She had dealt with the feeling of betrayal due to Doug's actions with, at first, anger. A great deal of anger. As time had passed, the anger had mellowed but not enough for her to even think about approaching him to speak about it.

But after the most recent incident, she had felt the need to try. The problem was, of course, that trying or reaching out solved one problem. Not all of them.

"And as admirable as that is, who watches out for you?" she asked. "As you run through this Hellfire business, who makes sure that you stay human? Because this is a road that many have not returned from."

"Qui custodiet ipsos custodes?" Doug quoted, with a wry smile. He remembered asking Forge the same question, trying to make the inventor see his own hubris. He shrugged. "I don't know." He'd done too good of a job of burning bridges.

"And there's your problem," Wanda said quietly. "Because if you slip and no one catches you, you will not be there to catch Emma." And Marie-Ange - she internally sighed and wished the young woman well on whatever she was doing out there. "Once a Knight falls, the Queen can be made vulnerable. Well, in as much as Emma ever is, I suppose." And as much as she understood chess. She hated the game, moreso now than before the entanglement with the Hellfire Club.

"And who should I be turning to?" Doug asked, his voice raw with emotion. He was tired of talking around the elephant in the room. "I'm hardly anyone's favorite person right now. I think Jubilee and Emma are about the only two who wouldn't be happier seeing me tossed out of this office on my ear."

And now Wanda just felt old. Placing the glass on the edge of the desk, she rubbed her face with both hands. This was where the evening had been building up to - she knew it, he knew it. The entire office had been at an impasse with him since they'd come back from Belladonna's accession to power. Nothing had been the same and while that rested all on Doug and Emma's decisions ...

"I cannot forgive your decision," Wanda said, voice muffled by her hands before she let them fall away. For this, she needed to look him in the eye. "Or that you got in my way. I cannot forget it either. I propose that we move forward, though, which we have not been doing. You can only regain my trust if I allow you, I suppose, if I give you that chance."

"I...okay," Doug said quietly. He had no idea how to even begin to rebuild the trust he'd broken, but he doubted that being depressed and despairing was a very good way to get started on that. "Thank you," he said, his voice rough with emotion.

Wanda picked up her glass again and titled it towards Doug. "One step at a time," she said to the unasked question. "We shall go from there. Na zdrave, Douglas."

"Za nas," Doug replied. To us. And for the first time in a while, he felt like he could actually say 'us' and feel included.