Maya & Darcy | Catch-up
Sep. 30th, 2024 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logs(backdated) Maya and Darcy manage a quick catch-up after the meeting with Hope & Artie.
She hadn't been able to check her emails very much, but every time she had there had been at least one note from the woman she called sister along with the standard updates Kevin was giving her. Between the two she had a patchy image of what the mansion had been like during the months she was gone, but the place still felt wholly alien to Darcy despite it having ostensibly been her home for almost a decade now.
Maybe that was it. She felt like a stranger in this place, a ghost that was occasionally tipped through the veil to haunt the hallways. Foreign. Intrusive. It wasn't a new feeling, but it was more keenly felt after having been people other than herself for months on end.
She was Stephanie always, vibrantly redheaded and eternally bitter over the loss of her aunt and cousin and terrified of another M-Day happening, except instead of mutants blowing up in her dreams it's regular humans going up like matches as dark, twisted shadows laugh about their inferiority. Part of her wanted the persona to be burned with this mission of Hope's. A bigger part of her dreaded having to go through those hoops again and hoped she came out unscathed.
Darcy pushed those thoughts aside as she slowly climbed the stairs, locking them behind the firewalls that were her saving grace these months, her tethers to sanity and the locket she peered into when she needed a reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other. A wash. Some sleep. Laundry and a basic set-up for Artie. In less than 72 hours she'd be in the air again, another country, language, and life on the tip of her tongue, lies in her smiles as she sweet-talked and cyberstalked, coerced and tempted, blackmailed and - if absolutely necessary - murdered.
Her door unlocked as she neared with the lightest flex of her power.
The light was on in the living room. Odd.
The figure on the couch, however, was a welcome surprise, and a photo that would be added to her mental locket for the future. Darcy's face blossomed into a smile as she took in the shape of her sister, crossing the floor in sure strides to wrap the taller woman into her arms with a firm hug. 'Missed you,' she signed after pulling back. 'Got your emails. Thank you.'
'Missed you too,' Maya signed one-handed, the other still engaged in the hug she wasn't quite ready to let go of. She'd missed Darcy and had worried for her despite knowing that X-force would tell her if anything permanent were to happen. At least, she hoped they would. Sometimes being the hero was easier than being the person in the background, even if that meant she regularly went up against people who saw throwing a building at you as an opening flurry. 'You okay?'
It was an inane question, the type co-workers asked each other on a specific day of the year because they'd watched one too many specials on TV about the danger of depression. It was an opening salvo though, an invitation to vent if it were needed. Maya knew Darcy would understand the underlying meaning of the words, and that she didn't need to spell it out.
'Exhausted, mostly,' Darcy signed with one hand before gesturing to the couch as she kicked her heels off. She shrugged her blazer off next, then unwound the scarf covering her hair.
Brilliant red fell down her back in a long braid as she finally sank into the couch with an appreciative sigh. "Red eye, flight delay, right into a meeting." When Darcy sighed, she let the mask slip away, looking far more tired than she'd hinted at during her meeting with Abbott and Artie. 'How have you been? How's your deer man?' Her fingers moved steadily through the signs, although her face was flatter than normal - mostly tired, but some of the mask lingered, the reserved worker she'd been most recently still clinging to her body like a film.
'I know, my hair looks a little...' she mimed a clown nose and shrugged. 'Brighter than it was supposed to be, but close enough to fit the part. That was the important part, and it'll probably get changed for the next mission. Next flight's in 3 days, so... tell me everything you couldn't put into the emails.' She's past exhausted, but. Sleep could wait a little when she had someone actually happy to see her. Her eyes prickled around the edges, but it felt good. Happy. It felt like Darcy.
Maya smiled and settled across from Darcy on the couch, one leg bent as she rested an arm against the back and continued to sign one handed.
‘He’s recovering well. I got him in to see Samson, had Haller pull a few strings for me since he wasn’t really seeing new patients. Professional courtesy but I wanted him to see someone who he didn’t need to edit with. If April hadn’t killed them, I can’t say that I wouldn’t have and rules be damned.’
Her sign was quick and forceful, an indication of the anger that still burned but was kept carefully in check. She’d learned to master it, and keep it for appropriate times and places. It was useful in a fight but only so far before you got sloppy.
'How are the rest of them? Did anyone follow-up with the... hell, I can't call her a girl, you two are contemporaries. Did someone talk to her after, make sure she was okay after that? I don't know what I would've done without Kevin and... Laurie... to lean on, after my own. And that's actually part of our job description.' Darcy's sign drags a little, pausing in a few places as she visibly thinks of what to say before continuing. She reaches out to pat Maya on the foot, then pulls back with a smile. 'I'm glad he's recovering well and has help. If either of you... or Parker... need something, have Kevin let me know and I'll try to make it happen.'
Maya hadn’t, she wasn’t sure if those closer to April had. She’d message Scott and find out. It hadn’t even crossed her mind, and she was usually better at that but with Trevor and everything else going on, she’d dropped the ball on checking in with a teammate.
‘I’ll find out,’ Maya noted, ‘I’ll keep it in mind but you’ve got enough on your plate. You need to make sure you stay alive and come back in one piece.’
She’d learnt not to let herself worry overly over Darcy when she was on a mission , in much the same way she was sure Darcy made herself not worry when Maya was off playing hero. It didn’t mean they didn’t, just that it was their choice to do what they did and it wasn’t particularly helpful to be reminded that people worried. You knew that, but you still had to do the things you had to do.
It was easier when you didn’t have a peanut gallery of concerned voices second guessing your actions, or wringing their hands.
'You know I can't promise that,' Darcy signed back. 'But you also know I'll always do my best to come back to you and Kevin, sister.' Her smile is genuine, though her eyes have shadows in them. 'I'll continue to check in when it's safe, even if it's just... a meme, an emoji string, a postcard.' Postcards were easiest, picked up and dropped at an airport, a major tourist city, a holdover as she shed one persona only to gain another, long gone from the area by the time the card reached the Americas. They were light on the surface, a few sentences of something she had seen or tried, and always signed with her love and good thoughts.
She dug in her bag at the reminder, handing the latest postcard to Maya directly. 'I was going to slide it under your door,' Darcy signed with a laugh. 'I'm so glad I get to hand it to you in person.'
It was an old story, one Maya had gotten used to as a kid with her Dad - you didn’t promise to return and you said things like ‘see you ‘round’ or ‘catch you later’ rather than goodbye. Nobody knew what would happen, and promising things just made it all harder.
She took the postcard and smiled at the picture, one of those scenery ones you got almost everywhere. Maya had a scrapbook back in her room she kept them in, with notes on guesses of where she thought Darcy might have got them from. She always checked in to see if she’d been right once she was back.
“You’ll tell me what you can when you’re back?”
"Of course I will," Darcy agreed. "And maybe I'll get to go somewhere with more interesting postcards. Stop at a museum or bookstore, find the airport stall with the cool local artist turned to prints. I've got some stories I can share with you from this trip, but let me get a nap first, okay? I'll share what I can while I prep for the next trip."
She hadn't been able to check her emails very much, but every time she had there had been at least one note from the woman she called sister along with the standard updates Kevin was giving her. Between the two she had a patchy image of what the mansion had been like during the months she was gone, but the place still felt wholly alien to Darcy despite it having ostensibly been her home for almost a decade now.
Maybe that was it. She felt like a stranger in this place, a ghost that was occasionally tipped through the veil to haunt the hallways. Foreign. Intrusive. It wasn't a new feeling, but it was more keenly felt after having been people other than herself for months on end.
She was Stephanie always, vibrantly redheaded and eternally bitter over the loss of her aunt and cousin and terrified of another M-Day happening, except instead of mutants blowing up in her dreams it's regular humans going up like matches as dark, twisted shadows laugh about their inferiority. Part of her wanted the persona to be burned with this mission of Hope's. A bigger part of her dreaded having to go through those hoops again and hoped she came out unscathed.
Darcy pushed those thoughts aside as she slowly climbed the stairs, locking them behind the firewalls that were her saving grace these months, her tethers to sanity and the locket she peered into when she needed a reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other. A wash. Some sleep. Laundry and a basic set-up for Artie. In less than 72 hours she'd be in the air again, another country, language, and life on the tip of her tongue, lies in her smiles as she sweet-talked and cyberstalked, coerced and tempted, blackmailed and - if absolutely necessary - murdered.
Her door unlocked as she neared with the lightest flex of her power.
The light was on in the living room. Odd.
The figure on the couch, however, was a welcome surprise, and a photo that would be added to her mental locket for the future. Darcy's face blossomed into a smile as she took in the shape of her sister, crossing the floor in sure strides to wrap the taller woman into her arms with a firm hug. 'Missed you,' she signed after pulling back. 'Got your emails. Thank you.'
'Missed you too,' Maya signed one-handed, the other still engaged in the hug she wasn't quite ready to let go of. She'd missed Darcy and had worried for her despite knowing that X-force would tell her if anything permanent were to happen. At least, she hoped they would. Sometimes being the hero was easier than being the person in the background, even if that meant she regularly went up against people who saw throwing a building at you as an opening flurry. 'You okay?'
It was an inane question, the type co-workers asked each other on a specific day of the year because they'd watched one too many specials on TV about the danger of depression. It was an opening salvo though, an invitation to vent if it were needed. Maya knew Darcy would understand the underlying meaning of the words, and that she didn't need to spell it out.
'Exhausted, mostly,' Darcy signed with one hand before gesturing to the couch as she kicked her heels off. She shrugged her blazer off next, then unwound the scarf covering her hair.
Brilliant red fell down her back in a long braid as she finally sank into the couch with an appreciative sigh. "Red eye, flight delay, right into a meeting." When Darcy sighed, she let the mask slip away, looking far more tired than she'd hinted at during her meeting with Abbott and Artie. 'How have you been? How's your deer man?' Her fingers moved steadily through the signs, although her face was flatter than normal - mostly tired, but some of the mask lingered, the reserved worker she'd been most recently still clinging to her body like a film.
'I know, my hair looks a little...' she mimed a clown nose and shrugged. 'Brighter than it was supposed to be, but close enough to fit the part. That was the important part, and it'll probably get changed for the next mission. Next flight's in 3 days, so... tell me everything you couldn't put into the emails.' She's past exhausted, but. Sleep could wait a little when she had someone actually happy to see her. Her eyes prickled around the edges, but it felt good. Happy. It felt like Darcy.
Maya smiled and settled across from Darcy on the couch, one leg bent as she rested an arm against the back and continued to sign one handed.
‘He’s recovering well. I got him in to see Samson, had Haller pull a few strings for me since he wasn’t really seeing new patients. Professional courtesy but I wanted him to see someone who he didn’t need to edit with. If April hadn’t killed them, I can’t say that I wouldn’t have and rules be damned.’
Her sign was quick and forceful, an indication of the anger that still burned but was kept carefully in check. She’d learned to master it, and keep it for appropriate times and places. It was useful in a fight but only so far before you got sloppy.
'How are the rest of them? Did anyone follow-up with the... hell, I can't call her a girl, you two are contemporaries. Did someone talk to her after, make sure she was okay after that? I don't know what I would've done without Kevin and... Laurie... to lean on, after my own. And that's actually part of our job description.' Darcy's sign drags a little, pausing in a few places as she visibly thinks of what to say before continuing. She reaches out to pat Maya on the foot, then pulls back with a smile. 'I'm glad he's recovering well and has help. If either of you... or Parker... need something, have Kevin let me know and I'll try to make it happen.'
Maya hadn’t, she wasn’t sure if those closer to April had. She’d message Scott and find out. It hadn’t even crossed her mind, and she was usually better at that but with Trevor and everything else going on, she’d dropped the ball on checking in with a teammate.
‘I’ll find out,’ Maya noted, ‘I’ll keep it in mind but you’ve got enough on your plate. You need to make sure you stay alive and come back in one piece.’
She’d learnt not to let herself worry overly over Darcy when she was on a mission , in much the same way she was sure Darcy made herself not worry when Maya was off playing hero. It didn’t mean they didn’t, just that it was their choice to do what they did and it wasn’t particularly helpful to be reminded that people worried. You knew that, but you still had to do the things you had to do.
It was easier when you didn’t have a peanut gallery of concerned voices second guessing your actions, or wringing their hands.
'You know I can't promise that,' Darcy signed back. 'But you also know I'll always do my best to come back to you and Kevin, sister.' Her smile is genuine, though her eyes have shadows in them. 'I'll continue to check in when it's safe, even if it's just... a meme, an emoji string, a postcard.' Postcards were easiest, picked up and dropped at an airport, a major tourist city, a holdover as she shed one persona only to gain another, long gone from the area by the time the card reached the Americas. They were light on the surface, a few sentences of something she had seen or tried, and always signed with her love and good thoughts.
She dug in her bag at the reminder, handing the latest postcard to Maya directly. 'I was going to slide it under your door,' Darcy signed with a laugh. 'I'm so glad I get to hand it to you in person.'
It was an old story, one Maya had gotten used to as a kid with her Dad - you didn’t promise to return and you said things like ‘see you ‘round’ or ‘catch you later’ rather than goodbye. Nobody knew what would happen, and promising things just made it all harder.
She took the postcard and smiled at the picture, one of those scenery ones you got almost everywhere. Maya had a scrapbook back in her room she kept them in, with notes on guesses of where she thought Darcy might have got them from. She always checked in to see if she’d been right once she was back.
“You’ll tell me what you can when you’re back?”
"Of course I will," Darcy agreed. "And maybe I'll get to go somewhere with more interesting postcards. Stop at a museum or bookstore, find the airport stall with the cool local artist turned to prints. I've got some stories I can share with you from this trip, but let me get a nap first, okay? I'll share what I can while I prep for the next trip."
