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xp_logs(Backdated) Arthur goes to Snow Valley looking for Wanda's guidance, but finds Marie-Ange instead.
A familiar blonde stood poised, almost hesitant, in front of what the little placard assured him was Wanda Maximoff's office. There has been no one at the front desk for what Arthur had assumed was extremely urgent covert businessy reasons — or lunch, a walk, perhaps some meditative mid-day yoga — so the man sat there cradling an iridescent box of fancy pastry bribes with a lot of questions and that specific, singular hesitation.
He sighed, feeling ridiculous, and raised a clenched hand to knock.
"Did you know?" Marie-Ange said, from a few feet behind Arthur's shoulder. "Did you know that the wheel of fortune came up four times in a row today, and none of them were for Wanda or Felicia." She had a card in her hand, and flipped it to show Arthur. It was hand-made, a bronze disc painted in chromed bronze, with the skyline of a broadcasting antenna behind it in precise simple lines. The tower ended in a starburst in matte yellow. "I think if I had not heard the elevator, I would have gotten three more."
The other man's smile widened in genuine sincerity as he leaned forward conspiratorially, "I don't know anything. Ever. It is really quite refreshing." His eyes focused on the card. "Like the game show? I was always more partial to the one with the pictures or the people in costumes with the doors."
"I am terrible at the game show. Too much English slang and pop culture." Marie-Ange explained. "It is a tarot card, I drew this one after that one day we had to pretend to be married. You know how unlikely it is to have it come up four times in four shuffles? Like getting all four aces in a single..." She trailed off. "For a regular person, it is extremely unlikely, and if you like numbers, but I think you do not, I can find someone to give you the exact very large number, but call it one in a million."
"Good thing I'm allergic to math!" Arthur actually winked. "That sounds like a lot of work. I'm also sometimes allergic to calendars, so..."
He held out the box of doughnuts, like a gift, and beamed. "Happy anniversary!"
"Merci." Marie-Ange lifted the box, perused the donuts, and then nodded. "Coincidentally, three of my favourite flavors are in that box. Perhaps we can share, since the more you are here, the more I suspect you are not meant to be talking to Wanda, and also she is in Europe. Belgium I think, but perhaps Austria. Do you take tea with your donuts, although I imagine that if I open our office refrigerator, it will have a bottle of whatever drink you like best, handy in the door, perfectly chilled, yes?"
His smile cracked just a little at that thorough description like ice underfoot. The tiniest fractures in a base of recently crystalized confidence. "Europe," he bulldozed right through the subject, "Huh! It has been too long since I've been. I had one memorable episode in Romania way back where I wrestled a bear."
Glancing down at the doughnuts, Arthur remembered himself. "Kombucha, if you'd please. And a question!" His voice grew a little timid with this, "I never really understood your abilities, but folks say you see the future. Is that true?"
Marie-Ange led the way to Snow Valley's little breakroom, letting Arthur follow. "That is the easiest explanation, yes. It is a very broad definition of see, and a very confusing definition of the future." She waved at the counter, where a small tidy pile of napkins and paper plates waited, as though the universe had anticipated donuts. "I do not always understand my abilities, but I did predict your arrival today, so there is that." She opened the fridge, took out a bottle of juice labeled "MA" - and another of kombucha that, as stated, had been right in the door, without any of the usual post-it notes or tape-labels.
"Hm." It was a many faceted 'hm,' full of lots of layers. Like a dip. "I've recently discovered I have the opposite... let's call it an opportunity."
"The opposite of precognition?" Marie-Ange said, as she handed over the bottle of kombucha, and then took a donut from the box, set it on a plate, and started neatly pulling it apart into bite-sized pieces. "You can see the past? I am going to feel very silly asking this, but you do mean the past beyond what you could remember, yes? Can you see the past of other people, or from a time before your own birth? There are a lot of possibilities in the opposite of precognition."
Arthur paused, giving her question a serious and thoughtful once over. "It isn't like what Adrienne has, I think? When everything went crazy with the powers and all, Alani said that she was able to see lots. Like a highlight reel from that always shirtless guy's trident. Me, though," and here he glanced at the gloves he was wearing, "What I get when I focus is a bit like when you watch a really touching card commercial. Strong feelings tied in with images. People I've never met. Things I've never done."
"That does certainly sound exactly like the opposite of precognition." Marie-Ange agreed between bites of donut. "Garrison had my precognition during the powers craziness, and it was completely different from mine. I have had time, and experience to hone mine. Perhaps the same for you? You have this, and have been accommodating yourself the entire time?"
His eyebrows creased in confusion about halfway through that statement. "Accommodating myself?"
Marie-Ange hopped up onto the counter in the little break room, and set her plate of donut down next to her. "Perhaps inhibiting is a better word? You said you get feelings and images. Is this new, since the powers swap, or has it always been that way? I think it is more likely you have always had this, mutations do not very often come up in our thirties out of nowhere." She smiled at Arthur, a little wryly - his birthdate was public record, but he had been lucky enough to age so very gracefully. "I have to push mine through a filter, I wonder if you have been doing the same this entire time."
"Huh," Arthur punctuated this with a small tilt of the head in honest consideration, "You make a valid point and thank you for that. I did generally assume that everyone got vibes, but also know how I experience the world is not normal." His gaze returned to her own, then, and there was something off about the serious glint in his expression that normally wasn't there. A hunger. "I have decided that I want more than vibes. I want to use this."
A little laugh escaped Marie-Ange's lips before she could stop herself. "Vibes. You are still my favorite fake husband. I imagine practicing first..." She took a drink from her juice, and set it down next to the half-eaten donut. "I run card predictions on almost everyone, not just because I am nosy, but for practice. It helps filter what I see, it helps establish what my limits were." She picked the juice back up, and looked it over, glass with a metal cap, a label that said organic hand squeezed oranges, no pulp. "I started with simple readings, I was a teenager, so mostly grades, dates, who would get into what university." She held the juice bottle out to Arthur. "So you start with something simple. Orange juice."
He stared at the orange juice, considering her words very carefully. One hand idly began removing his right hand glove, and he was soon touching the offered glass. The next moment paused, MA still holding the bottle, as Arthur squinted in concentration.
Then the moment broke as he sighed through his nose. "No. I'm just getting glass and loneliness."
"Are the oranges lonely? Or the person who filled the jar?" Marie-Ange asked, with a shrug. "I know, you would not know. More a question to think about. I should show you my notebooks. Sometimes I have to ask, is the future dire, or just the traffic. Last week I either predicted the end of the world, or a thirteen car pile-up on the highway." She paused. "Which is probably the end of the world for someone, I suppose I was not entirely wrong."
"Oh no," Arthur was knocked out of the glassy loneliness right quick by that mental image, "How do you make a plan from that? Stop both? Focus on the car crash?" His mental gears were beginning to spin into overdrive on the matter, but his intentful expression conveyed that there was no world where action couldn't be taken.
Yet with a shake of the head, he cleared the mental math like an etch-a-sketch. "No, no, I have to figure out my own plan. My struggle, to be real with you, is that I don't get all that much for most of what I've tried to read. Images like old photographs. Faint, brief feelings."
"Most things are just things. They do not have feelings attached. I have a favourite travel mug, but I do not think it would have more than faint attachment associated?" Marie-Ange offered. "So do you need to find things to read that have meaning? What happens if you touch someone's wedding ring, or a graduation cap?"
Arthur bit his lip at this. "Is that true? I feel all the time." He paused, then, considering how to explain this. "It is always through someone else's eyes, I was wrong before, but there is always more. You have a good point on meaning."
He paused, thoughts twisting. "I'm not left as just myself when I try to use this, but I want this gift to be something I can help with."
"You literally work for a detective agency. You are going to have so many uses for this ability now." Marie-Ange replied.. "Imagine how many times you are going to get to touch someone's car and learn who the stalker is, or find who vandalized the benches outside the community centre again."
"Someone did that again?" Arthur shook his head, playing up the mock disbelief as much as he possibly could. "Good thing I'll be the Bench Avenger! All will fear my power!"
He paused just enough for the image to solidly form itself in MA's mind. Then, much less bombastically, "As long as they're feeling something when they do it."
"I am going to buy you a cape." Marie-Ange said, entirely seriously. "It is the kind of vandalism that has hate behind it." She paused, and winced. "Perhaps actually touching it would be a poor idea, right now? It sounds highly uncomfortable to touch and have memories of bigots."
"Do that and the next luck snap will..." That's about as far as that thought went. "I'm sorry, I'm no good at threatening people. Quentin put it as one of my quarterly goals. I had my hero time, though, and no thank you. On the touching thing — any advice on figuring out what to do with it? How to turn it into action."
Marie-Ange thought for a bit, and picked at her donut, idly picking off frosting and sprinkles and dropping them bit by bit onto the paper plate. "I take notes. Anything that, I think you would call it 'has important vibes', yes? Anything that feels important, or strange, or very out of place, I write it down. You work for a detective agency, treat it like a case?' She cocked her head, not unlike a bird, one eye steady on Arthur. "Write things down, or take voice notes. Embrace when it feels right to do so. Make it public. But yes, in your case, quite a few less threats. You do not have the.. je nais se quois to walk into someone's office and threaten them, but you have options for that. Bring it to Quentin, or Alexander. Or bring it here. Share with the other teams. "
"I like the idea of pulling out a little recorder now and then. Like a real detective," and the implied 'scenes straight off television' was pretty thick in the imagining here, "You give great advice. We should really catch up more often. Keep the marital bliss alive." The playfulness twisted, then, toward something more focused. "Thank you, though. I do like the thought of making my new gift public."
"Get a little recorder!" Marie-Ange said, almost chirping. "If it will encourage you to remember, do what is fun. I use sketchpads because then I remember to write it down, if having a little secret recorder would help, I think you should embrace it. And merci. I like having you as my favourite fake husband. I do have to admit, I was also fake married to Doug a few weeks ago, but it was less fun. I threw up on the side of a highway." She stood up, dusting donut sprinkles off her fingertips, and looked around the break room for a minute, almost like she was trying to assess the entire Snow Valley office. "Do you know, I think we have a few little micro recorders, if you want to help me go find a few. We are spies, what kind of spies would we be if I did not have a box of hideable recorders somewhere in the office."
"Advice and a scavenger hunt? You spoil me. Although..." He paused here, assembling the words like a puzzle to ensure they fit together in the most polite version possible. "I am not a spy. Something more obvious might fit my style better? I would want people to know what I'm doing."
"I would not bet against you finding just the right one that would help you help others." Marie-Ange was also very careful in her wording, and it showed with little pauses in her speech. "My other fake husband has an entire shelf of gadgets. Shall we go raid them and see what we can find?"
A familiar blonde stood poised, almost hesitant, in front of what the little placard assured him was Wanda Maximoff's office. There has been no one at the front desk for what Arthur had assumed was extremely urgent covert businessy reasons — or lunch, a walk, perhaps some meditative mid-day yoga — so the man sat there cradling an iridescent box of fancy pastry bribes with a lot of questions and that specific, singular hesitation.
He sighed, feeling ridiculous, and raised a clenched hand to knock.
"Did you know?" Marie-Ange said, from a few feet behind Arthur's shoulder. "Did you know that the wheel of fortune came up four times in a row today, and none of them were for Wanda or Felicia." She had a card in her hand, and flipped it to show Arthur. It was hand-made, a bronze disc painted in chromed bronze, with the skyline of a broadcasting antenna behind it in precise simple lines. The tower ended in a starburst in matte yellow. "I think if I had not heard the elevator, I would have gotten three more."
The other man's smile widened in genuine sincerity as he leaned forward conspiratorially, "I don't know anything. Ever. It is really quite refreshing." His eyes focused on the card. "Like the game show? I was always more partial to the one with the pictures or the people in costumes with the doors."
"I am terrible at the game show. Too much English slang and pop culture." Marie-Ange explained. "It is a tarot card, I drew this one after that one day we had to pretend to be married. You know how unlikely it is to have it come up four times in four shuffles? Like getting all four aces in a single..." She trailed off. "For a regular person, it is extremely unlikely, and if you like numbers, but I think you do not, I can find someone to give you the exact very large number, but call it one in a million."
"Good thing I'm allergic to math!" Arthur actually winked. "That sounds like a lot of work. I'm also sometimes allergic to calendars, so..."
He held out the box of doughnuts, like a gift, and beamed. "Happy anniversary!"
"Merci." Marie-Ange lifted the box, perused the donuts, and then nodded. "Coincidentally, three of my favourite flavors are in that box. Perhaps we can share, since the more you are here, the more I suspect you are not meant to be talking to Wanda, and also she is in Europe. Belgium I think, but perhaps Austria. Do you take tea with your donuts, although I imagine that if I open our office refrigerator, it will have a bottle of whatever drink you like best, handy in the door, perfectly chilled, yes?"
His smile cracked just a little at that thorough description like ice underfoot. The tiniest fractures in a base of recently crystalized confidence. "Europe," he bulldozed right through the subject, "Huh! It has been too long since I've been. I had one memorable episode in Romania way back where I wrestled a bear."
Glancing down at the doughnuts, Arthur remembered himself. "Kombucha, if you'd please. And a question!" His voice grew a little timid with this, "I never really understood your abilities, but folks say you see the future. Is that true?"
Marie-Ange led the way to Snow Valley's little breakroom, letting Arthur follow. "That is the easiest explanation, yes. It is a very broad definition of see, and a very confusing definition of the future." She waved at the counter, where a small tidy pile of napkins and paper plates waited, as though the universe had anticipated donuts. "I do not always understand my abilities, but I did predict your arrival today, so there is that." She opened the fridge, took out a bottle of juice labeled "MA" - and another of kombucha that, as stated, had been right in the door, without any of the usual post-it notes or tape-labels.
"Hm." It was a many faceted 'hm,' full of lots of layers. Like a dip. "I've recently discovered I have the opposite... let's call it an opportunity."
"The opposite of precognition?" Marie-Ange said, as she handed over the bottle of kombucha, and then took a donut from the box, set it on a plate, and started neatly pulling it apart into bite-sized pieces. "You can see the past? I am going to feel very silly asking this, but you do mean the past beyond what you could remember, yes? Can you see the past of other people, or from a time before your own birth? There are a lot of possibilities in the opposite of precognition."
Arthur paused, giving her question a serious and thoughtful once over. "It isn't like what Adrienne has, I think? When everything went crazy with the powers and all, Alani said that she was able to see lots. Like a highlight reel from that always shirtless guy's trident. Me, though," and here he glanced at the gloves he was wearing, "What I get when I focus is a bit like when you watch a really touching card commercial. Strong feelings tied in with images. People I've never met. Things I've never done."
"That does certainly sound exactly like the opposite of precognition." Marie-Ange agreed between bites of donut. "Garrison had my precognition during the powers craziness, and it was completely different from mine. I have had time, and experience to hone mine. Perhaps the same for you? You have this, and have been accommodating yourself the entire time?"
His eyebrows creased in confusion about halfway through that statement. "Accommodating myself?"
Marie-Ange hopped up onto the counter in the little break room, and set her plate of donut down next to her. "Perhaps inhibiting is a better word? You said you get feelings and images. Is this new, since the powers swap, or has it always been that way? I think it is more likely you have always had this, mutations do not very often come up in our thirties out of nowhere." She smiled at Arthur, a little wryly - his birthdate was public record, but he had been lucky enough to age so very gracefully. "I have to push mine through a filter, I wonder if you have been doing the same this entire time."
"Huh," Arthur punctuated this with a small tilt of the head in honest consideration, "You make a valid point and thank you for that. I did generally assume that everyone got vibes, but also know how I experience the world is not normal." His gaze returned to her own, then, and there was something off about the serious glint in his expression that normally wasn't there. A hunger. "I have decided that I want more than vibes. I want to use this."
A little laugh escaped Marie-Ange's lips before she could stop herself. "Vibes. You are still my favorite fake husband. I imagine practicing first..." She took a drink from her juice, and set it down next to the half-eaten donut. "I run card predictions on almost everyone, not just because I am nosy, but for practice. It helps filter what I see, it helps establish what my limits were." She picked the juice back up, and looked it over, glass with a metal cap, a label that said organic hand squeezed oranges, no pulp. "I started with simple readings, I was a teenager, so mostly grades, dates, who would get into what university." She held the juice bottle out to Arthur. "So you start with something simple. Orange juice."
He stared at the orange juice, considering her words very carefully. One hand idly began removing his right hand glove, and he was soon touching the offered glass. The next moment paused, MA still holding the bottle, as Arthur squinted in concentration.
Then the moment broke as he sighed through his nose. "No. I'm just getting glass and loneliness."
"Are the oranges lonely? Or the person who filled the jar?" Marie-Ange asked, with a shrug. "I know, you would not know. More a question to think about. I should show you my notebooks. Sometimes I have to ask, is the future dire, or just the traffic. Last week I either predicted the end of the world, or a thirteen car pile-up on the highway." She paused. "Which is probably the end of the world for someone, I suppose I was not entirely wrong."
"Oh no," Arthur was knocked out of the glassy loneliness right quick by that mental image, "How do you make a plan from that? Stop both? Focus on the car crash?" His mental gears were beginning to spin into overdrive on the matter, but his intentful expression conveyed that there was no world where action couldn't be taken.
Yet with a shake of the head, he cleared the mental math like an etch-a-sketch. "No, no, I have to figure out my own plan. My struggle, to be real with you, is that I don't get all that much for most of what I've tried to read. Images like old photographs. Faint, brief feelings."
"Most things are just things. They do not have feelings attached. I have a favourite travel mug, but I do not think it would have more than faint attachment associated?" Marie-Ange offered. "So do you need to find things to read that have meaning? What happens if you touch someone's wedding ring, or a graduation cap?"
Arthur bit his lip at this. "Is that true? I feel all the time." He paused, then, considering how to explain this. "It is always through someone else's eyes, I was wrong before, but there is always more. You have a good point on meaning."
He paused, thoughts twisting. "I'm not left as just myself when I try to use this, but I want this gift to be something I can help with."
"You literally work for a detective agency. You are going to have so many uses for this ability now." Marie-Ange replied.. "Imagine how many times you are going to get to touch someone's car and learn who the stalker is, or find who vandalized the benches outside the community centre again."
"Someone did that again?" Arthur shook his head, playing up the mock disbelief as much as he possibly could. "Good thing I'll be the Bench Avenger! All will fear my power!"
He paused just enough for the image to solidly form itself in MA's mind. Then, much less bombastically, "As long as they're feeling something when they do it."
"I am going to buy you a cape." Marie-Ange said, entirely seriously. "It is the kind of vandalism that has hate behind it." She paused, and winced. "Perhaps actually touching it would be a poor idea, right now? It sounds highly uncomfortable to touch and have memories of bigots."
"Do that and the next luck snap will..." That's about as far as that thought went. "I'm sorry, I'm no good at threatening people. Quentin put it as one of my quarterly goals. I had my hero time, though, and no thank you. On the touching thing — any advice on figuring out what to do with it? How to turn it into action."
Marie-Ange thought for a bit, and picked at her donut, idly picking off frosting and sprinkles and dropping them bit by bit onto the paper plate. "I take notes. Anything that, I think you would call it 'has important vibes', yes? Anything that feels important, or strange, or very out of place, I write it down. You work for a detective agency, treat it like a case?' She cocked her head, not unlike a bird, one eye steady on Arthur. "Write things down, or take voice notes. Embrace when it feels right to do so. Make it public. But yes, in your case, quite a few less threats. You do not have the.. je nais se quois to walk into someone's office and threaten them, but you have options for that. Bring it to Quentin, or Alexander. Or bring it here. Share with the other teams. "
"I like the idea of pulling out a little recorder now and then. Like a real detective," and the implied 'scenes straight off television' was pretty thick in the imagining here, "You give great advice. We should really catch up more often. Keep the marital bliss alive." The playfulness twisted, then, toward something more focused. "Thank you, though. I do like the thought of making my new gift public."
"Get a little recorder!" Marie-Ange said, almost chirping. "If it will encourage you to remember, do what is fun. I use sketchpads because then I remember to write it down, if having a little secret recorder would help, I think you should embrace it. And merci. I like having you as my favourite fake husband. I do have to admit, I was also fake married to Doug a few weeks ago, but it was less fun. I threw up on the side of a highway." She stood up, dusting donut sprinkles off her fingertips, and looked around the break room for a minute, almost like she was trying to assess the entire Snow Valley office. "Do you know, I think we have a few little micro recorders, if you want to help me go find a few. We are spies, what kind of spies would we be if I did not have a box of hideable recorders somewhere in the office."
"Advice and a scavenger hunt? You spoil me. Although..." He paused here, assembling the words like a puzzle to ensure they fit together in the most polite version possible. "I am not a spy. Something more obvious might fit my style better? I would want people to know what I'm doing."
"I would not bet against you finding just the right one that would help you help others." Marie-Ange was also very careful in her wording, and it showed with little pauses in her speech. "My other fake husband has an entire shelf of gadgets. Shall we go raid them and see what we can find?"
