xp_logs | Doug and Garrison (backdated)

Backdated to Tuesday. Doug and Garrison go out on an epic bender and discuss their membership in the 'she left in the night with a Dear John letter-slash-restraining order, and now she's back, and what the hell do I do now?' club.

Doug wasn't entirely sure whether Paige's remark about tracking devices had been joking or not, but he figured that if she had been serious, her efforts were fairly likely to be confined to the X-Men and not X-Force. So he felt reasonably secure in seeking out Garrison. He gave his name very politely at the reception area, and waited for Garrison to be paged.

After a few minutes, Kane stepped out of the elevator, his FBI identification still pinned to his breast pocket. He walked over to the guard at the desk, who pointed him towards Doug.

"Ramsey. You're the last person I figured would willingly walk into this building. If the NSA knew you existed, you'd already be hidden in a top secret facility in a decommissioned missile complex outside of Aspen." He said, giving him a handshake.

"I suppose it's a good thing I'm not on their radar, then," Doug replied fairly easily, returning the handshake. "Not that I'm unpatriotic or anything, but I prefer to not be a lab rat." Switching gears, he looked at Garrison assessingly. "So, how much does it take you to get drunk?" He raised an eyebrow. "I ask for purposes of science, and how hard my wallet is going to get hit."

"More than a few, but I'll only put you on the hook for one beer." Kane said, pointing towards the door. "There's a cop bar around the corner. Booze and everyone is armed. You'll love it."

"Sounds good. I was definitely going to suggest someplace that wasn't Harry's or Finnegan's." The less likelihood of the pair of them running into someone they knew, especially Marie-Ange or Adrienne, the better. "Lead on, G-man."

"Don't call FBI agents G-Men. We hate it and have the ability to abuse the legal process when annoyed." Kane said, as they stepped out into the courtyard and down a couple of blocks. The bar looked more like a hotel bar in a mid-level Marriot, which was appropriate since police traveled coach and normally that was as swank as a visiting investigator could expected. He waved Doug into a booth and caught the eye of the bartender.

"Luigi! Couple of beers here. The regular." The bald man behind the bar nodded as Kane slid in across from Doug.

Doug hoisted his pint when they arrived in the typical gesture of proposing a toast. "To being the two founding members of the 'she left in the night with a Dear John letter-slash-restraining order, and now she's back, and what the hell do I do now?' club," he offered.

"That's depressing." Kane said, clinking his glass with Doug's. "Shouldn't there be some kind of bill of rights for us? Like, with penalty clauses that involve some kind of sexual compensation via their attractive friends for breaking the rules,"

"You're welcome to give it a shot, maybe you'll have better luck at it than me." Doug took a long pull at his beer, then shook his head. "I tried it and got more or less called a man-slut for my troubles."

"See, the whole key is that you don't tell anyone about it. Especially co-workers."

"When the co-workers and friends groups overlap, it tends to be a bit difficult there." A wry chuckle punctuated Doug's statement. "So I saw you're staying in the city," he noted. "You staying at a hotel, or what?"

"Nah. The field office has a couple of spare rooms. During investigations, we can pull some serious hours." Kane took a sip, casting a quick look around the room. "Besides, I've already had Frost come and find me at Harry's. The last thing I need is her 'accidentially' coming into my room in the middle of the night or something."

"Just so long as you've got someplace to stagger back to that doesn't involve driving." Because they weren't going to stop until someone made them, Doug was thinking. Which meant that he'd be taking a cab back to his place, and dealing with the mother of all hangovers tomorrow morning, most likely. "I ran into her at Finnegan's the other day," he noted neutrally.

"That's nice. I wish you both many happy returns." Kane said sourly, looking into his pint.

"She's still retarded for you," Doug retorted, a bit more sharply.

"The first part I believe."

"She did what she did because she thought it would protect you," Doug said pointedly. He waved off whatever reply Garrison was about to make. "I know, I know, you're a big strong Mountie, don't need anyone's protection. But the Black Court doesn't come at you in a standup fight. They find a lever, something that you care about, someone you care about...and they squeeze. They don't play by rules and laws." Doug poured back his entire pint, remembering the look on his sister's face, a combination of stunned disbelief and unreasoning fury.

"Look, I know you're tied up into this whole Hellfire Club Rich Pervert thing, but Black Court threats? You know what happens when you threaten an FBI agent? The entire fucking weight of the Bureau lands on your goddamn neck. And unless you own the President, there isn't any level of political protection that will save your ass. And me particularly? Between picking a fight with my father, who apparently still owes half of the British secret service and SHIELD, and the entire nation of Canada getting into the fight...." Kane fumed, finishing off his pint.

"If she had talked to me, we could have fought these pricks. Instead, she gave up, and in the end, still lost everything."

"That'd be great, if they ever came at you directly." Doug snorted derisively. "But they don't. They come at you sideways, and you don't see it until it's too late. And the entire weight of the Bureau, and your dad, and the entire secret service of the entire damn world wouldn't do you much personal good if someone put a depleted uranium round at the base of your brainstem from a kilometer away." Which is how Doug would have done it if he were inclined to even consider such a thing.

"And the real people behind it, the Sebastian Shaws of the world, even if you could go after them, their hands are always clean. Because they aren't ever the ones to actually do anything. 'Will no one rid me of this meddlesome Mountie?'" he quoted with a wry twist of the lips. "You might get a pawn or a catspaw, or maybe even a middling person like Wyngarde. But the problem is, there's always another one willing to trade in their principles for the promise of power."

Kane barked a laugh. "I'm sorry, but you're really going to talk about the ominious threat of shadow ops against me as a good defense for Adrienne? Pete Wisdom was the closest thing I had to a father growing up, and my real father is the closest thing to James Goddamn Bond the world has ever seen. You honestly think a fucking businessman is going to out-manevour them? Or that they are smarter than the most effective law enforcement agency ever developed because they have money to hire assassins and mercs? Man, it sounds like you're drinking the koolaid too, Doug."

Kane leaned back with his pint, the smile subdued and not mocking. "I appreciate the warning, Doug, but you're not telling me anything I don't know. I've spent the last two years trying to find out who killed my friends in Canada with the same kind of approach. My point is that there were options other than running away, and if it meant pulling down the Hellfire Club brick by brick, there's ways to make that happen. Or make the cost of carrying out their threat too high to consider."

Doug grimaced. "Okay, point taken. There's no way of knowing until the chips are down, I definitely get that. And you've got resources of your own, stipulated. The point I was really trying to make is that the Black Court -is- a legitimate threat, and people often do stupid things when they're threatened and scared." He knocked back a fair amount of the new pint that had been set in front of him. "Don't I know that too well." He drew a finger along the whorls in the polished wood of the table. "Just...she regrets what happened. And now the thing that she's scared of is that she's screwed up things with you beyond repair." And the romantic in Doug hoped that wasn't the case.

Garrison started to say something, and then stopped, considering. He finished off his pint with two quick swallows and waved for another one. "Here's the thing, Doug. Adrienne's been effectively screwed over in pretty much every relationship she's had. When we got together, she used to talk about how it changed her. How she didn't want to claw her way to power and use people and all sorts of things. But really, the only thing I ever asked from her was to trust me. When she ran away, even for all the best reasons, it was the old Adrienne back in charge there. She made the decision without trusting me enough to even talk to me about it. I know she tells herself it was to protect people, but really, how much of it is that it wa easier for her that way? Staying and fighting meant trusting people to stand with you."

He sighed. "So which Adrienne is the one that's come back? The one that can't be trusted or the one that betrayed my trust? Kind of caught coming and going."

Too much of that resonated with Doug. He grimaced. "And Marie-Ange left, at least somewhat, because she felt like she -couldn't- trust me. Flip sides of a coin, or something." He knew how much Adrienne regretted things from his talk with her, but mostly, he didn't have any answers to the difficult (and fair) questions Garrison had posed.

"At least she gets the pre-cog excuse to fall back on. Adrienne didn't know, and her fear of the Black Court was greater than her trust in me. Still is, as far as I can tell." The Canadian stared into his beer, as if the bubbles would divine some solution to the situation. "And now every time I talk to her, it gets me too angry to think straight, and we just end up fighting."

"I hear that." Doug steepled his hands and leaned forward against them, his shoulders slumping. "It's like, for work stuff Marie-Ange and I can generally get by okay, but other than that, it's like, zero to cold war in ten seconds."

"There's only one conclusion to draw." He took a sip. "Bitches is crazy, yo."

"I'll drink to that." And the pair of pint glasses clinked against each other.