Wanda & Clint | Sunday Morning (backdated slightly)

[x-hawkeye.livejournal.com]

Wanda and Clint have breakfast to discuss the mechanism.


Yawning into his shoulder as he checked the latest piece of toast in his frying pan, Clint blinked slowly and then reached for his coffee cup. He hadn't doctored it with anything because at this time of the morning - a terribly early 9:30 - the most important thing was getting caffeine into his system as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, that mission statement had led him to make quite a mess when he'd accidentally poured coffee into his mug - his mug that was upside down. Precious minutes had been wasted as he cleaned up the spill and changed his sleeping pants. The only reason he wasn't drinking straight from the coffeepot was that he was actually expecting company. Thus, the door to the suite he shared with Billy was propped open, the scent of delicious things wafting down the hall.

If Wanda hadn't known where Clint and Billy's set of rooms were, she certainly could have found her way there just by following her nose. This wouldn't be the first time Clint had fed her breakfast and Wanda was certainly happy to keep the trend going. Pausing at the door, she gave it a light knock before entering. There was an upside down coffee cup on the counter and she quirked an eyebrow at Clint. "Issues?" she asked, making a beeline for the coffee maker.

Ever since Simon's death, Wanda had been having issues sleeping. She had been battling back by burning through the good alcohol in her apartment and, after that ran out, caffeine. Large amounts of caffeine.

Her internal organs were probably going to stage a revolt.

Clint grunted, scowling at the treacherous, upside down mug before deciding actual words would be a good idea. "You want your coffee Irish, there's some Jameson in the cabinet over there." He gestured toward one in particular even as he pulled bacon from the pan at the back of the stove. "Or Bailey's, I guess, but there's cream and sugar... somewhere. Or milk. Milk in the fridge, yes."

Plating the bacon, Clint finished up with the toast and then whipped up the eggs quickly, a simple scramble. He put the eggs on the plates, too, and then turned to hand one to Wanda. "Morning." His smile was rueful.

Her smile matched his. "Morning yourself," she responded, taking the plate over to the table before bringing her coffee over to the fridge. "Just milk for now, I think. I have done enough damage to my liver for the time being. It has earned a well deserved rest." She normally drank it black but she'd been going through enough coffee lately that doctoring it a bit helped.

"Thank you for the bribe," she continued, gesturing towards breakfast with the mug of coffee as she sat down. "I would have done it for free but food lured me out of my comfortable hidey hole."

"Hey, all work and no play," Clint said with a shrug. He sat himself down beside Wanda with a smile and a shrug. "But hanging out is a plus. Also, breakfast is pretty much the only thing besides stir-fry that I can consistently not ruin. So." He smiled again, taking another sip of his coffee. "I'm sorry about all the heavy stuff you've been fielding lately. Doesn't sound like it's been fun at all. But this thing Namor dropped in my lap - at the very least, it'll be interesting. And you've got those contacts - the ones you were checking on those runes with for me before, right?"

"I am certainly in need of other things to think on these days," she sighed. The first bite of the French toast was fantastic and Wanda made a happy noise in approval. She made a note to wrangle only breakfast out of Clint if that was one of the few things he knew how to not ruin. "I have spent too much time in my own head lately, so thank you for the company and the chance to focus on something else."

Picking up the coffee mug in both hands, Wanda leaned back in her chair and focused on the man next to her. "You have my undivided attention, especially since it is interesting. And I have contacts galore."

Clint poured syrup onto his French toast before cutting it up rather haphazardly as he nodded along. Then, after taking a bite, he considered everything he knew and shrugged a bit. "Okay," he said after swallowing his food. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he unlocked it and flipped through the apps until he got to the pictures. "Namor handed this over to me. It's Atlantean, he says, and it was used as some kind of... transport thing. Problem being that it's not working. Other problem being that he doesn't know how it worked, as it was basically so far below his pay grade back in the day that there was no reason for him to know."

Tapping the picture to enlarge it a bit, Clint flipped it around so that Wanda could see it and then handed the phone over. "That thing there at the top, you can depress it. Makes the mechanism light up. From there, it's supposed to create some kind of... I don't know, portal or something." He waved his fork around a little. "It doesn't get that far, obviously. So we don't know how it works, why it's not working, where it might go - there are runes on the gears you can see. I managed to clean it of most of the crud - you push that button and the gears turn. Since we've got actual runes on the gears, I figured rubbings would be good for you to hand off to your people. See what you could dig up, maybe. And, y'know, also make sure there's nothing weird that will actually turn me into a wombat."

"I doubt it would turn you into wombat. After all, they come from Australia. It is far more likely to turn you into a species of animal that is native to Atlantis." It did not surprise her that Namor had no idea how the machine worked. After all, Wanda hadn't the faintest idea how her computer worked outside of the very, very basic idea of it. She flipped through the pictures, taking a distracted sip of coffee or a bite to eat when she remembered.

"The gears work? So the very basic portions of it still function." She lowered the phone so she could look at Clint and realized this was the first thing that had caught her attention outside of emergencies in weeks. "Some runes are a single shot - they get powered, they do their job and that is all she wrote. Others are built to last but would need to be recharged over time. If the runes on this machine are those type, then it might be that you are missing that, ah, well - power source?"

Nodding, Clint finished off his coffee and stood up to retrieve the pot. He brought that over and refilled his mug, then offered it to Wanda as he settled again and picked his fork back up. "We're trying to work out the energy angle - can't mimic an energy source we don't understand, right? But we've turned up nada so far. I'm thinking there might be something more than surface similarities to the cryotube that SHIELD had - it also had some kind of internal power source. Obviously, though, that power source was meant to last longer. Maybe it was like... y'know, a bigger battery or something. As opposed to whatever was meant to power this thing.

"And even then, do we want to try and mimic the power source to get it working again? We don't know where it goes. There's another one of these, though in way worse condition, in a museum in Greece. Corroded all to hell. What if the others are all like that, too?" Clint shook his head. "Just poking at it is all well and good, but actually making it function... that'll be way more difficult."

"Send me the information on the museum in Greece," Wanda immediately replied, pouncing on that bit of information. "It may not be in working condition but the details of who found it, how and where might shed some light on your little mystery." She sat back in her chair and gave a half laugh, half groan. "You know, I actually have a museum curator I can tap that has enough pull and craftiness in her to probably convince this museum to loan her the other machine. Even corroded all to hell, being able to compare them side-by-side would not be a bad thing."

Sliding his phone back over to him as he shoved a whole piece of bacon in his mouth, Clint tapped a few buttons until he was in his contact list. He didn't actually have a contact at the museum, but the museum's information was stored there. He emailed it to her, the locked the phone and shoved it in his pocket. "Should be in your inbox. And if you can get them to loan it out, I'd be seriously impressed. But once we're wrapped up here, we can head down to the lab so you can see ours for yourself."

The phone in Wanda's pocket vibrated, alerting her to the new e-mail. "I will start working on Agatha later today," she said, already mentally bracing herself for that conversation. "But until that delightful conversation, I will busy myself playing in the lab and poking at this mystery machine."

She paused and snorted, reaching for her fork to finish off her breakfast. "Remind me to keep the chaos firmly under control. Knowing my luck, I'd zap the bloody thing and end up teleported to the bottom of the ocean."

Laughing a little, Clint gave Wanda a small salute. "Keep the chaos on lock. Yes, ma'am."