xp_logs | Ev, Clint, and Tasha, Thursday evening

The three ex-SHIELD agents reunite and discuss what brought them all to Xavier's.

Clint glanced from his phone to Natasha, then back again and blinked. "Huh," he said, tilting his head to the side a bit. "So uh. Instead of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, we should probably start calling this place Xavier's Home for Wayward SHIELD Agents or something." Turning the screen so she could see it, Clint quirked an eyebrow. "Ev's here."

Natasha arched an eyebrow when she saw the screen. "Indeed. So, that conversation you had with Phil about when I came to the mansion. Does that still apply now that we've become a trio? Quartet if you count Ms. Lewis as ex-SHIELD." She smiled slightly. "The asshole didn't even bother to tell us himself. That calls for us to pay him a visit."

"Yeah, probably still applies," Clint said, frowning a little. "But I think we should maybe just invade with Chinese, not do our typical thing. He seemed pretty ragged when I saw him after Alexa's funeral. Damn, Phil's probably gonna have a worse time of it, now. But you're off the grid entirely, I'm in NYC enough for people who could be curious to see me. Darcy's... well. A civilian, so hopefully that minor political shitstorm's blown over."

"Well duh. Chinese and alcohol and polite knocks at his door before we pick the lock. Of course." She sighed. "I can't do anything to help Phil from here. And me resurfacing to help him would raise more problems than it solved. Unfortunately, I think he's on his own." That didn't make her happy. Phil Coulson had done a lot for her and leaving him hanging out to dry weighed on her. "We should probably visit and remind him why we're his favorites?" She tapped her fingers against the laptop keyboard. "Maybe after a few more months, I'll make an appearance on the international scene. Start some rumors going that I've gone freelance again after being so spectacularly burned."

"Maybe," Clint agreed. "Might draw attention off him... but it might make people question his ability to handle his people, too. Might be best to just keep laying low. The whole intelligence community has to know you got burned. It's only logical that, if you're alive, you're keeping out of sight." He waggled his hand back and forth a little, then said, "You order the Chinese. I'll go find my last bottle of good vodka."

She hated that. She hated that essentially her entire life was in shambles. Rebuilding for her would be easy enough. She just hated that it was necessary. "Probably but still plenty of time to sort through the rubble and see what threads I can follow." She reached for her mansion issued cell, briefly wondering when she needed to switch to the next burner floating through before she remembered that she didn't need to. "How do you not have more than one bottle of good vodka? I send them regularly enough."

"I made friends here," Clint said, pushing himself up off the couch. "Friends with healing factors. Or iron livers, I haven't quite figured out Ramsey's or Namor's ability to drink vodka like it's water."

Natasha scrolled through her contact list for the nearest decent Chinese place that delivered and had it ringing as she pressed the phone to her ear. "I curse the mutant gods that didn't give us healing factors," she said as she leaned back against the couch and kicked her feet up on the coffee table.

"I dunno," Clint called, having wanted into the kitchenette. "I kinda like being able to get drunk when I wanna. Kyle has to eat some ridiculous pineapple Everlcear thing to get a buzz and it doesn't even last all that long -- aha!" Returning to the living room victorious, he sat the vodka on the coffee table and then flopped onto the cushions to wait for the food to arrive.

An hour later, he jogged down to the gate to get the food and then jogged back to the mansion. "Jeez, its cold out there," he said as he met up with Natasha. "You narrow down which suite he's in?"

Natasha just arched an eyebrow at him as she handed him a coffee in exchange for some of the food. He'd been the one to decide to jog out there with insufficient layers on. The vodka was tucked in a small bag hanging from the crook of her elbow. "Yeah, he's in one a couple doors down from us. Makes things convenient for the future." When they reached said door, she gave it a grand presentation wave and waited for Clint to announce their presence.

Suppressing the urge to roll his eyes, Clint shifted the food so it was all help in one arm, put his coffee in that hand, and then used the other to knock. "Room service," he called, standing back a little so he and Natasha would both be visible through the peep hole.

Which was not entirely necessary itself. The knock called Ev's attention to the door and he immediately recognized Clint's mutant signature. There was another unfamiliar one that accompanied him, though, one he had never before encountered. A physical mutation, but he did not look any further because he recognized Clint's partner as soon as he looked through the peephole.

"Agent Romanoff, you're alive," he said curiously when he opened the door. "And you're here. And a mutant. What have I missed?"

Natasha smiled. "Agent Thomas. The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated though necessary. I'll fill you in shortly. But first," she raised the vodka bag and the Chinese takeout, "we have housewarming gifts. You didn't really think you could sneak in here without us knowing."

"Probably it's that he didn't know we were here. Coulson's been keeping our location under wraps," Clint said, grinning. He jiggled the bag of food in his own arm, careful not to spill his coffee. "Delicious housewarming gifts."

Ev stepped aside to let his two ex-colleagues into his mostly empty sitting room. All he seemed to have, besides the standard furniture, was his laptop, which he promptly closed and set aside. "Clint's right, I had no idea either of you were here. When did you even manifest, Natasha? I know every mutant in Ops."

The laptop didn't escape Natasha's notice but Ev would tell her or Clint in time and then Clint would pull her in if necessary. "Several months ago, on my birthday to be exact, after all my covers were spectacularly blown." She set the food down on the table then pulled out the vodka. "The milk run of a mission I was on suddenly turned into a clusterfuck and my dormant X-gene decided to make its presence known after a hefty and varied dose of drugs were injected into my system."

Clint had somehow managed to pry open the bag of food he held as they walked toward the table, so when he spoke, he had a mouth full of half an eggroll. "It was less than awesome. But they're all dead now, so. And we got some leads. Ish."

"We have something in common, then," Ev said, his tone more droll than dark. He stepped into the kitchenette to pour himself a cup of water from the tap and, spotting the booze in Tasha's hand, offered the two of them red Solo cups of their own. "Clint told you about Alexa and the others, then? You think you were burned?"

Natasha poured them all a good portion of vodka. "Yes, and I've been doing some digging on Franklin Hall." She took a slow sip from her cup. "Oh, there's no doubt about it. It was a large scale ambush that took me down. The idiots bragged about the full dossier they'd been presented on me detailing far too many of my aliases and assets."

"Which we're working on," Clint said around the other half of his preemptive eggroll. "I mean, on both fronts. But don't worry, Tasha's the only person I've hit up about Hall." Putting all the food on the coffee table, he accepted his red solo cup and took a sip.

"I told Professor Xavier and Scott, too," Ev said as he snapped apart his chopsticks and claimed a few pieces of General Tso's chicken for his carton of rice. "They run the place, they ought to know if I'm putting them in any danger. Which I wouldn't expect. Professor Xavier makes this place a fortress. Always has."

"Always has?" Clint asked, having swallowed his eggroll finally. He picked up a carton of shrimp lo mien as he raised his eyebrows. "You got history here, huh?"

Ev smirked. "Where do you think I learned how to do this?" he asked, his eyes shimmering like a rainbow, as he effortlessly flicked a crispy wonton off Clint's forehead and back into the carton while balancing on the back two legs of his chair.

Natasha arched an eyebrow in amusement. "You just have secrets upon secrets. Was there ever a point this place wasn't a fortress? From what Clint told me before I came here that didn't seem to be the case."

Snorting, Clint picked the fried wonton back out of the carton and ate it. "We're all full of secrets," he said.

Ev's eyes faded back to normal and he sat his chair back down. "They've certainly beefed up security over the years. I was a student here in the mid '90s. Started just before Professor Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr had their . . . falling out, I guess. Whatever you'd call it." Big messy breakup, he'd joked back then. "So, yes, quite a history here."

Natasha laughed. "Not surprising considering the personalities involved. Probably wasn't the last epic falling out. The personalities this place attracts," she waved a hand at the walls, "must be a powder keg more times than not." She pulled the bag with the eggrolls toward her and took one for herself. "Your move as permanent as mine? Or part of a long con? 'Cause Coulson can only make excuses for the growing horde of SHIELD agents currently residing here for so long."

"She's not wrong," Clint pointed out, pausing his quest for the lo mein so he could raise his brows at Ev.

There was no easy answer to that easy question, and the expression on Ev's face made that clear. He was silent for a moment as he considered. "I don't know," he finally admitted. "I don't know if SHIELD is safe anymore. If what happened to my team happened to you, too . . ." He left the thought hanging.

"Yeah," Clint said, frowning. "Phil's on it, at least. Or sort of on it. As on it as he can be. And we have to keep in mind, what happened to you and what happened to Tasha could be entirely unrelated. We haven't had a chance to do much digging into her side of things yet. What about you?"

"Stonewalled at every turn." Ev poked at his rice with this chopsticks. "There's something going on. I can feel it. I just can't prove it. Or figure out who's behind it. Or why they'd do it."

Natasha finished off her eggroll then excavated her box of sweet and sour pork from the bags. "Extremely compartmentalized shadowy government organization? That seems par for the course. Between the three of us, our contacts, and the resources here, we should eventually find a loose thread to pull upon."

"I haven't tugged on any threads yet," Clint said. "Not really. I mean, I basically did what that dude did when he quit the airline. Y'know, blew the emergency water exit and slid down the slide, then strutted off. And got sued later or something, I dunno. That metaphor got unwieldy. Point being, whatever got the two of you, whether related or not, doesn't seem to've come after me. So I can maybe do something somewhere."

"If there is something and I'm not just being a paranoid psycho, then it might not have gotten into SWORD," Ev pointed out. "Yet. So I'd be careful about poking my nose into SHIELD. And regardless, I have to think that Fury knows something. He always does, and he never lets on."

"I got no desire to play poker with that man," Clint said, shaking his head. He'd never actually tried to track Fury's microexpressions, figuring it'd be about as useful as tracking Coulson's. "Still, best to keep our options open, right? The best plan's an adaptable one."

"Just, whatever risks you take, keep them away from here." Maybe unnecessary to say out loud, but Ev felt better for doing so. "If you so much as suspect someone's onto you, then stop. Our first priority has to be to Professor Xavier and this school."

Clint gave the other man a mildly unimpressed look. "Duh," he said. "There are kids here."

Natasha gave Ev an identical look to the one Clint was giving him. "That goes without saying. They didn't sign up for our fight and we won't pull them in."