xp_logs | Sharon & Darcy

xp_darcy posting in

Sharon wakes Darcy up entirely too early in the morning for a serious talk and a lesson about unfair choices.

There was a thump on the foot of the bed as a familiar weight invited itself onto the mattress, followed shortly by another of similar size. Four light feet padded over the nest of comforters to seek out any kind of gap that might allow access to the person sleeping beneath and, when this failed, settled for curling up next to the closest approximation of a head to begin a thunderous purr.

"I feel kittens." One of them was possibly chewing on her hair, and there were definitely tiny needle-like claws kneading into her scalp. Poky-pawed, adorable kittens at that, but not the slow prowl of Crooks or the deliberate walk and pause of Sharon. Darcy opened her eyes and reached a hand up, carefully extracting both of the kittens from her hair and sitting up as she tucked them into the still warm spot by her side. Glasses were next, and she blinked tired eyes around the room until they focused on a purple figure. "Sharon?"

"Present."

The cat-hybrid was seated in the doorway of Darcy's room, her tail uncharacteristically still and curled around her legs. She seemed subdued.

"My sons have missed you," she said as she watched Toothless stumble over the lumps in the comforter. Lightning McQueen, less adventurous, settled down in the warmth of Darcy's newly vacated body.

"It's not a roll call, hon," she replied, lightly teasing. "I missed them too, and you as well. Would you like to come in and have a seat? There's plenty of room." The behavior was a concern, but as Darcy came awake and remembered the email from just before her trip it added up to something inevitable, perhaps. "Get the weight of whatever is bothering you off your chest, maybe?"

Sharon gazed at her for a long moment, trying to sort through feelings the preceding weeks had done little to clarify. She gave up.

"Liam helped you find people to shoot, and this has upset him. I am upset he is upset. Knowing that this is your job and you did not tell me, this has upset me also." The tip of her tail twitched stiffly. "I have many emotions. All of these I dislike."

Darcy nodded, fingers worrying at the edge of the blanket between her fingertips. It was exactly what she'd suspected, then, and she was quiet for a few minutes as she determined the order to tackle these disliked things in. "Yes, it's part of my job now. For security reasons, I don't typically go into detail of what Snow Valley does outside of what you can find on the website unless there's an actual need. It's easier to just not talk about that part of things, keep a little bit of my life and work separate in a way that can be frustratingly hard to do when you share a house with so many people." She shrugged. "It wasn't a personal slight against you, and now that you know I'd be willing to answer questions as long as they don't compromise the work we're doing."

This response was given due consideration. Cautiously, Sharon settled down on the carpet with her hands curled in front of her, sphinx-like.

"If work commonly involves sniping aggressors from rooftops such concerns are logical," she said, extremely grudgingly. "But confusion persists. You will explain this job, please."

Darcy let out a short bark of laughter. "We typically handle intelligence gathering and covert ops, and more of the international networking. Basically the things that the X-Men can't be caught doing but are necessary. Sometimes that just means we infiltrate a group and dismantle them through mostly legal means. Other times it means we shoot someone. Sniping into a crowd like that is rare and generally ill-advised, but we were short on time, separated, and full on armed, angry enemies attacking our people."

Darcy picked up Toothless from stomping on Lightning McQueen, depositing the kitten into her lap and dangling fingers in front of tiny paws. "And that brings us to Liam. A young, visible mutant with limited self-defense training that I'm aware of, separated from the rest of you in the crush of bodies. He got sent to the rooftop for two reasons: I needed a spotter, and he needed to be out of the crowd. He could've said no. Part of me wishes he had, but–" She took a deep breath, the what ifs that haunted her nights rattling around in her brain, and looked Sharon in the eye. "If he had told me no, I would've respected it. Respected him. Had him do something else. But there are shots I would've missed, and it's very possible that you and Terry, at minimum, wouldn't be here right now. Plus a handful of people in the district that I'm aware of only in passing, or from seeing them being menaced through my scope that day. And I will take Liam's understandable upset for being in that situation, and your upset for that, my own upset for taking that bit of innocence away, and anyone else's upset for any of that in exchange for the fact that I can still see you in front of me, alive and whole and safe. It might make me a monster, and if so that's a truth about myself I'll have to live with, but I will because the rest of you are still here to remind me of why I chose this life. At the end of the day, that's the most important thing to me. You're upset at me, rightfully so, but you're alive and well to do it."

Now the tail was swishing -- short, stiff flicks that revealed the extent of the cat's agitation as she struggled to process the emotions generated from this new information. The details about Snow Valley's inner workings were, when contemplated with an objective eye, logical enough in the context of what she understood of life in the mansion. It would follow that a place that monitored an interdimensional wormhole would also extend its attention to more local surveillance. Likewise, it also followed that to deploy at all an organization like the X-Men would first need some means by which they were made aware of a situation. Unexpected as the revelations were, in retrospect they all slotted neatly into place. It was everything else that was giving her trouble.

"I am . . . upset still, that I was not trusted," Sharon said as she tried to tease out the thread of her own feelings. She hunched over her hands and muttered, defiantly, "I am cat, but I am not a child. Is no matter what Kevin Sydney says."

"Honey," Darcy trailed off. "First off, to Kevin almost everyone in the mansion is a child. I think the only person here that might be older than him in actually lived years is Logan? So please don't take that personally. He still calls me kid sometimes, and I'm closer to 40 than childhood. Second, it's not a trust or age thing, not entirely. It's a secrets thing. There are very few people here that I talk to about the realities of what Snow Valley does, regardless of age or trustworthiness. G2, Mossad, the CIA, SHIELD, MI-5 and 6, the FSB... all of those agents at the lower levels are likely going to be directed to deflect about their job details. Either with a tangible cover like Snow Valley that actually incorporates their skills, or a boring-sounding bureaucratic position for their government. We're never just a lawyer, an analyst, or an accountant. The more people who know the truth of that, the harder it becomes to maintain, and the more dangerous our lives become. I don't introduce myself to anyone new at the mansion with the specifics unless we meet because of my extended job duties."

The fur on Sharon's tail bristled with momentary indignation before settling again. She turned her yellow eyes on a patch of carpet in front of her. While physically unable to admit such a thing aloud, even she understood "but I want to know things" was not an adequate justification for breaking security protocols. She was sulking. Worse, she knew it to be sulking. In light of Kevin's accusation about her level of maturity this was an awareness she resented.

"This is understood," Sharon said at last. She raised her eyes to Darcy, her clawed hands minorly distressing the rug as she fidgeted. "But this job is yours. Was unfair, making such a request of Liam. He is kind. If he is asked to help is not in his nature to refuse."

"It was." Darcy dipped her head in acknowledgement. "I did my best to make sure he understood the consequences of what he'd be doing as well as is possible without having actually done it, and gave him the option to just observe or sit things out entirely instead without putting any sort of guilt trip on his shoulders. He chose to help. These were my choices, Sharon, but they were Liam's choices too. I respect that, even if I dislike that it was ever necessary."

"Yes. Liam said this also. That he would not do it again, but does not regret the choice made in the moment." Sharon's eyes dipped back to the carpet again, and then her tail lashed. Her yellow eyes snapped up to Darcy's.

"Is unfair," she burst out. "Is unfair that this was asked of him, and unfair also that you were made to ask. I do not like that these were the choices given to you."

"Unfortunately, that is sometimes the truth about choices in a moment. Unfair, unpleasant, or just plain bad." Darcy slid her hand to the edge of the bed in offering, keeping her voice gentle. "Would you like a hug or some small cat time? Would that be helpful at all?"

Choices that were unfair, unpleasant, or just plain bad -- this, maybe, was what had really been bothering Sharon. She was upset, yet there was no one to be upset at, only the way circumstances had fallen. Without a target these feelings congealed into an ugly tangle in the pit of her stomach. Even now that she understood them she couldn't be rid of them. She could only sit with them, just as Liam had sat with his, and how Darcy sat with hers. Sit, and wait, and hope that in time they would diminish to something bearable again.

Wordlessly, Sharon shifted into her small cat size and jumped onto the bed. Toothless and Lightning came to welcome her as she padded over to Darcy, head and tail low in something almost like contrition.

"I am going to scoop you up like the baby for cuddles." She did just that, careful hands making sure Sharon was well supported during the brief move from bed to arms. "It's okay to be upset at me and the situation in general," Darcy said quietly as she cuddled the purple cat close. "I'm not upset at you, and you weren't mean or rude or doing anything I'd actually have trouble forgiving, just concerned about your friend. I'll reach out to Liam once I've gotten some proper sleep and see if he wants to talk, but I've been letting him have his space so he can come to terms with things. But you and I? We're fine on my end. My door's still open for you." She shifted as the kittens stepped on her, ending up reclined against the pillows and covered in cat.

Sharon didn't answer. Such were the benefits of being in the form of a housecat: no one blamed you for not having the words. But in time, resting in Darcy's arms and as the two kittens chased and swatted at each other, she began to purr.