Are We Ourselves? - Wrap-Up

[x-hawkeye.livejournal.com]

The next morning, the group discusses some of the previous day's events — and oddities — while looking forward to going home.


Clint's head was killing him — he apparently had some of bio-electric nanite-constructed interface circuit thing in him somewhere that he was going to have to have taken out. It wouldn't be any worse than removing his tracker after the whole thing with Tasha getting Tasha-napped, but. It still sucked a lot. And he'd apparently tried to throttle Ev while rafter dancing.

"Ugh," he mumbled, shifting to press one hand against the shallow slices Ev's borrowed claws had left on his stomach. At least they had an overabundance of spare shirts he could borrow. "So. I need coffee. And this sucked hybrid donkey-gorilla balls."

"I don't have vodka for the shot that statement requires," Natasha says quietly from her position on an adjacent bed. Waking up in the closet with a hastily scrawled note explaining the situation had been unpleasant considering the last thing she hazily remembered was unloading an epi-pen enhanced dosage of her venom into a thrashing Kyle Gibney. While waiting for the team to return, she'd managed to piece together a few moments more of memory: Gibney dropping the first trigger phrase shot through with her complete disdain for whoever had taught him the Russian. Her relief at seeing everyone there on the other side of the door had slid into unsettled disquiet once SHIELD had arrived and everything had been contained. The incident raised questions she didn't have answers to.

"Nobody we care about is dead and Clint's a-hole ex partner isn't missing, counting this one in the didn't entirely suck column." It wasn't the worst mission Kyle had been on. "Course on the other hand." He wiggled his fingers, still buddy-taped until the bones set. "Mols and I are in the one-for-one column for beating each other's asses. So mostly it sucked."

Midway through packing up her equipment, Molly paused to smile softly at Kyle's statement but otherwise remained quiet. Her body hurt, muscles and everything. She didn't think that was possible. But then again a lotta things happened she didn't think was possible. She went back to carefully rearranging her tools.

Ev looked over the group from his position against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He seemed to come out the least scarred, although even coming here had been a steep price to pay. "You're all alive," he pointed out neutrally, his tone neither reaffirming nor accusatory. "You rescued the people you came here to find. Gibney's right. It was difficult but you did well with an awful situation."

Topaz wasn't looking at anyone. Her eyes were fixed firmly on the floor, her face completely impassive, betraying nothing of what she thought about what Everett was saying — or about anything for that matter. A slight shake of her hands was the only sign that anything at all was wrong with the young witch.

"Yeah," Clint said, eyes on Topaz's hands and the tremors running through them. Probably nobody else would notice — maybe Tasha'd pick up on some other cue or Ev could synch up with Topaz and use her own empathy against her, but probably nobody but him'd notice her hands. "Surviving's not the same as thriving, but whatevs. We can go home. Too bad my a-hole ex partner can't remember what the hell he took with him when he ran off, who he gave it to, or where they were going. Ugh. I am glad that antivenin worked on somebody not me, though." He offered Molly a thumbs up with his free hand.

Zipping up the carrying case, Molly ran her tongue along the roof of her mouth and felt a sting of pain. But she was herself and not Ebersol's cheerleader anymore and that was good. She returned the thumbs up with another smile, this one a bit more than soft.

"Me too," she said. It was not fun before that. She glanced down at her suitcase for a moment. "And... we saved the SHIELD agents too. And the town. Like... a whole town," she added quietly, thoughtful. So maybe it wasn't all sucky.

"Just sayin' though, the plane home better be warm as fuck." Kyle pointed to a few patches of peeling skin on his hands. "Frostbite blows, and fucking Norbert — which, by the way, dude has the same name as Hagrid's dragon, that is never not gonna be funny — didn't remember to tell me to wear fucking gloves."

Still nothing from Topaz, which may or may not have been normal depending on who you asked. At Kyle's words, however, she pulled her hat down tighter over her ears, eyes still on the floor. She just wanted to go home. And probably never leave the library again.

Stretching his leg out so he could bump Tasha's knee with his sock-covered feet, Clint tipped his head to the side. He'd gotten the rundown, knew basically what'd happened to the rest of his team after he and Kyle went MIA. All the vodka in the world wasn't going to help his bff deal with all the possibilities Kyle's badly accented Russian trigger phrases spawned.

Natasha quirked an eyebrow. Clint and Ev were likely the only two that had an inkling of the Pandora's Box that'd just been opened. She now had even more questions that needed answering. Questions she wasn't thinking about. Her foremost priority was seeing if she could extricate the mansion folks and maybe even Clint and Ev from getting even further involved. Her past seemed determined to haunt her with clawed, clutching hands. She was determined to contain the fallout as best she could.

"Coulson's having his people do an inventory of the warehouse. I remembered enough of what happened before you guys got to the airport to give him the SKU ID number thingie from the item Hendrickson took." Rolling his eyes, he said, "Of course, Phil's got some kinda memory archive in his brain that relates to anything and everything Captain America, so there's something hella weird about this robot dude going after Agent Carter's knockout lipstick or whatever."

Kyle grunted, and then scratched at his face. "Might be worth me going in for tea and the Prof going in my head to figure out what the fuck I said. Hopefully it's in there and I didn't puke out remembering it." He glanced at Topaz, and made a mental note — text Amanda, and order small, snarky and magical about two weeks of carry-out, and at least four good novels. "Sorry Natasha." He muttered. Again.

"I leave that decision up to you, Kyle. But I want you to know that I don't blame you. Mind control through technology isn't normally what I deal with but the principle is the same: you weren't acting of your own free will." Natasha gave him a slight reassuring smile. She flicked her gaze to Clint. "As for the Captain America memorabilia... we can hope it's something as innocuous as that. No one goes to as much trouble and risk as the terminator ripoff did without good reason."

Finished packing, Molly sank down into the seat beside Topaz. She pulled her knees against her chest and crossed her arms before resting her chin on her arms. "We should also maybe probably tell the X-People and the other teams what happened too. Since they're our peeps. And maybe they might have ideas?"

"Yeah, I'll talk to Scott," Clint said. "Debrief and all that. Might be good for you guys to drop by and give him your impressions, too." He rubbed at his eyes, then straightened up. Half-joking and he half-distracted, he looked toward a clock on the makeshift infirmary's wall and muttered, "We did good, though. Probably worth actually gettin' in on that whole team thing just so we don't have to do things all separate. 'S inefficient. Somebody remind me to actually talk to Jennie about that when we get home. And whoever else."