PEPPER P. (saltedand) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-05-03 18:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *log, pepper potts, thomas brandon |
Pepper and Thomas - Part II
Who: Pepper, Thomas (and Amanda)
What: Betrayal, tea, trades
When: Recently
Where: Still upmarket Manhattan hotel.
Warnings: Nada
It was, Pepper realized, rather more detail than was exactly needed but it was a gesture, a sparse one and edged with the grim certainty that the information shared was dangerous. But it was a gesture all the same. Thomas spoke of the Hand as if it were a separate entity, one he did not consider part of himself - something coolly and dispassionately calculating, without reason to appeal to.
“You are trying to control it?” she guessed. There was something there, in the back of her voice, an attempt to parse understanding. The hot smell of pennies had gone, but she could still feel the flicker of awareness of the structural bones of the building much like catching something on the very edge of peripheral vision. It was an unsettled feeling, an unconscious reach for surety.
The little girl off in the corner was quite clearly something else, another puzzle piece that was entirely separate from the sparse ruthlessness of the man sat with a sugar-bowl’s contents twisting in front of him as effortlessly as if such things could be done by anyone. It implied a softness, that utter lack of concern to see in the little girl’s face, the calm certainty in him that took place even at the edges of the room. It was difficult to untangle.
“You have already told me now.” Some of the brusque tension had leaked out of her voice; some but not all. “What danger does it bring?”
“I am controlling it,” he said, agreeing and disagreeing at once--a trait, by the way, that was almost mandatory for any leader of an ancient, demon-worshiping ninja cult. “I am the Master, an earned title, but… accurate.” Modesty clearly did not factor in. “To control the Hand, a single man must know both this world and many others; he must know the arts of death, shadows, violence, precision, fire, silence and blood.” A short pause. “To you, that would be murder, assassination, chaos, and varying types of sacrificial magic.” The gray eyes blinked calmly through the rising mist of sugar crystals. They were undulating in an extremely slow cone, like the grains of an hourglass without container. He kept his mind balanced with their aid, something like a candle flame might be to meditation.
“The Hand is old, very old, and like all old powerful organizations, it is deeply corrupt. I attained my title before I had weaknesses. Before Amanda returned here, to her mother and…” Thomas took a deep breath, a human breath, thick with humidity and straight into his lungs. “And to me. Like her, for you, safety is remaining anonymous. If the Hand doesn’t know you, they have no reason to hurt you.”
Dry, he added, “Unless, of course, you go on a murder spree through Europe to avenge your bygone days as a Russian experiment and disrupt some very fragile magic works.”
Pepper did not know many leaders of ancient, demon-worshiping ninja cults. This much was clear in the translation of the furrowed brow, the polite tension in the hands knotted together on her lap and the clouded curiosity in the bright blue gaze that was still pinned on Thomas, a blade slid neatly through the butterfly to hold it in place.
“How did you earn it?” She didn’t blink at the tumultuous list of arts known, or chaos caused. She watched the sugar rise and fall - it was steady, much like her own grip now on the architectural bones of the building. Stability provided security. But yes, she could discern how a man like Thomas, one who had ambition and strength and a sense of self, could delve into something tainted and think he could come out whole. Before Amanda. The little girl suggested the dichotomy, a man familiar enough with the dark but who shielded the child. Safety in anonymity, and yes, she could understand the motivation that had turned her into nothing more than a listening device. It was the kind of decisiveness that accounted for one form of safety and took no account of anything else.
“So that’s what he did to offend you.” Equally dry. “I would have thought a little assassination and chaos was right out of the Hand’s playbook. But he has a different purpose. I see.” A slight pause, and an examination of the sugar that spiraled above the table that was slow, thoughtful.
“You must of course undo it. You do realize that.” The blue eyes were steady. Expectant.
Thomas looked down at the back of his hands where they lay on the table, and gathered his thoughts in front of him, ordering them in the manner best available to him, stacking them along the blue-veined lines and whitened scars. “That,” he said, cautiously, “is not relevant to the current conversation.” He shifted in his seat, under the strain, and as he did so the tenuous roots of the building, the cross beams, the pipes that led into nowhere, all shifted in time, the temporary dimension they all inhabited the very opposite of stable. It definitely wasn’t New York outside those windows.
Thomas could practically hear his bones cracking under the weight of the combined gravitational fields. He watched the sugar. “Assassination is one of our particular strategies, yes. The Soldier’s strategy is not ours, however. It would not be wise for the Hand to engage in open warfare with anything like HYDRA. It would be a bloodbath.”
Amanda was returning. She wasn’t triumphant, but by the irritated look on her face, she had figured out the fourth dimension required for solving the puzzle in the door wasn’t currently available to her.
“Yes, of course. A few drops of blood, it is done. Hello.” This last was to Amanda, who scowled darkly at him and accused him of tricking her. Thomas simply smiled at her, which seemed to irritate her further. It was rather Max-like of her, Thomas mused, and he restrained himself from picking her up again, settling for looping a long arm around her waist and drawing her closer to his side. Amanda was temporarily distracted by the floating sugar sculpture. He turned his head and looked back at Pepper. “I was hoping Amanda could stay with you, for a few days.”
Pepper was about to argue that it was entirely relevant to the conversation at hand. Thomas was a closed book other than occasional snatches read from a page that the man had turned to and shown. How he had been placed in charge of an organization as terrible and powerful as this one, spoke a great deal to his character or otherwise. But she was not of an era where character was something anyone worried a great deal over, and her mouth clicked shut given time to consider the Soldier’s strategy (she didn’t think he had one) and the disturbing idea of a bloodbath.
“For HYDRA, or the Hand?” This was, she thought, an important distinction. What she’d seen of HYDRA, she didn’t like at all. But it was all beside the point, the Soldier was clearly without strategy, and equally clearly of interest to the Hand. “What will you do with him when he’s found?” And then they were interrupted again by the small girl who had been exceedingly patient about being blatantly stowed out of the way.
Pepper smiled at the flared irritation and the narrowed-brow look that drew on the bone-structure she was beginning to see was much like Thomas’s own. The affection, the intimacy with which they interacted was fascinating, even if the chasm opened up by Thomas’s ruthless use of whatever assets were to hand, was not entirely closed even by a dismissive agreement to undo whatever it was he had done. And then she blinked, startled.
“I’m sorry?” A swift calculation, visible in the scrutiny of blue eyes. “Because it’s safe where I am?” She imagined that the easy affection in that arm wrapped around Amanda did not casually suggest depositing someone he valued a great deal with anyone.
A bloodbath indeed. Thomas’ eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “For both. HYDRA is not an enemy to be underestimated, as I keep telling my… less restrained… colleagues.” He absently pushed Amanda’s hair off her shoulder to put it in some semblance of order. She used to chew it when she was very very young, and he hadn’t stopped getting it out of her way when he was worried about something. “I don’t want him. I wanted his friends to do something about it instead. Which they have, if the current silence if anything to go by.”
Slight shrug from Thomas. “You are generally well-protected, yes. And not associated with me or my family in any obvious sense.”
Thomas had already explained some of this to Amanda, clearly, because she had a tight, irritated little expression, not unlike the one old women wear when told they can’t park on the street. She didn’t say anything outright, but she made it clear that she was only putting up with this situation because she was civil and long-suffering. The effort involved in staying quiet looked halfway to painful. “Only a few days,” Thomas pressed.
Pepper didn’t have a spare moment to wonder who the less restrained colleagues might be, or why they underestimated HYDRA. The tight lines that pulled at the corners of her mouth fractionally relaxed when he said he didn’t want the Soldier himself, and still further let go of the bridled tension when he made mention of the current thickly-blanketed silence. Yes, life was quieter. She hadn’t known the Soldier was cutting a swathe of bodies at all. She was not the best listening device Thomas could have constructed, despite the access Stark Tower permitted her.
She watched Amanda’s face now, not his. Pepper didn’t know many children. Not enough to merit the relaxed, easy comfort of those who could parent in absentia. Amanda’s face, Pepper thought, was a more honest perspective. Amanda didn’t much like it either. “Does Amanda mind?” One eyebrow slid higher, and rather than speaking to Thomas, she spoke now to Amanda.
“Do you?” Pepper’s voice didn’t change. It was still dry, unyielding. Either she didn’t know enough to soften and to unbend and to make life blurry at the corners for small people who couldn’t deal with sharp ones, or the intelligence in the pointed face as Amanda leaned into her father’s shoulder made her think of books written about little girls from India. Amanda wasn’t stupid. Neither was Pepper: the wrenching feeling, much like a note being struck wrong on a piano when the room had first changed to bleed rosy light through the glass, had prickled her spine. Something had been done, something that had altered the bones of the building temporarily. Something to secure it, and she knew it as instinctively as she’d grown used to the tics of a man smart enough to invent the impossible.
He was worried about the small girl at his side, and even injured, spiky pride didn’t stand on end for that. “If I do this, you’re still not forgiven.” It needed obliquely stating nonetheless.
She replied for herself, "Amanda minds." The third-person was a deliberate echo, but her voice was calm and even sweet. "But Amanda will do what she's told, even if she isn't sure it's best, because she knows her daddy is trying to keep her safe." Her direct gaze stated what lived between the words: Amanda didn't think this was a good idea, but she was willing to suffer to please her daddy, who was probably wrong about everything.
Thomas took in a deep breath. “I know.” He could feel Pepper wavering, even if she had a blank expression on over what she must be feeling herself, a business expression that he recognized on people coming to the negotiating table. He thought about his business for the first time in several hours, realized his inattention was going to lose that cover. His grip tightened on the back of his daughter’s neck, not enough to hurt, but frightened and protective. The cover was important.
The sugar sculpture began to collapse in slow motion.
The bones of the building creaked, bones here and bones in a dimension separate entirely, steel bones and concrete veins.
“This discussion needs to complete soon,” he said, quietly.
She winced. It was instinctive, reaction caused by action. The sugar sculpture fell like the sea washing away a sand-castle, and she looked at Amanda, rather than the too-sharp face of her father. Pepper didn’t have a cover: she was cover. There was a building not too far from the hotel’s ordinary location that was a life, almost entire and complete. She had turned off the phone that had been stashed in the very expensive, soft leather bag, but the life continued to hum, a live wire. Electric.
“You take it off,” she said quietly, not caring if it was the technical terminology or it wasn’t. This world, where the light bled bright through the windows and the Hand was described in dangerous, polarizing terms by a man who she had not considered fearing in any way except a business negotiation but now was unsettled by in the display of subtle power, made up of sugar granules and a little girl who leaned against his side and spoke like an adult - this world wasn’t hers. Hers was business acumen and lawyers’ deals.
“You take it off, and Amanda can do what she’s told. I’ll take her.” Her chin was steady. It was a business deal, struck in iron. She held out one hand; it didn’t shake.
Thomas stiffened at the phrasing. “She will stay with you. Temporarily. She is not taken.” There was a hint of bare panic there on the tail end of the last word, but he let go of Amanda’s shoulder. She gave him a worried little scowl and crunched her fingers through the sugar mess on the table, now just a heap of fallen sweetness.
Thomas looked blankly at her hand and then the gray eyes focused on hers in understanding. “Ah. Not your blood that breaks it.” He hesitated, looking at Amanda, who glared back at him. Thomas looked guilty, and produced in his left hand a bronze blade, the width of a pencil and length of a household key. Pepper would have sensed it and its makeup, but there was little enough of the metal amongst the mess of the building and its former concealment. He touched it to the center of his palm where Amanda couldn’t see in several smooth movements, and then shook Pepper’s hand.
“Thank you,” he said, leaving a smear on her palm and nothing but a suggestive tingle on the spine. He stood up, wavering again and steadying himself on the edge of the table. “Call me if there is trouble,” he told his daughter, somewhat sternly, the guilt gone. She looked airy and uncaring, because she had to punish him for this new abandonment in some way. Thomas looked pained, and glanced at Pepper, as if in apology.
The little girl was a girl and not a teacup, and had there been any suggestion that the arrangement was anything other than temporary, Pepper would have corrected him. But the panic was sharp, a clear note in so much self-possession. She noted it instead of responding, but the look she gave him was deeply familiar and unthinking: withering patience.
Her palm was smeared, and she wiped it neatly on the napkin in her lap, folding over the crisp ecru linen until the blood stain was trapped between layers and Amanda couldn’t see it, even when Pepper shed the detritus of sitting neatly, awaiting a tea-service that would never come, and let the napkin drop into the creases of the chair. She held out a hand to Amanda.
“You know how to reach me,” she said, with finality. “If there’s trouble.” It was an echo, and she looked downward. “I presume she has a school. Places to be.” She looked at Amanda directly now, “You can tell me.” And a brief look at Thomas, as she gathered the soft, expensive bag and herself together.
“You can put it back now,” she said quietly. The iron bones of the building were all there, but they weren’t. He had power, and he had shown it and she wondered how it was trust could be given and taken away, like a splay of cards across a table.
Thomas actually smiled into Pepper’s withering look, a different man of kindness and surprised creases about the mouth and eyes, even a depression in one cheek under the faint streak of gray moving behind one ear.
Thomas gestured at the napkin, and his blood pulled at it, dragging it up and through the air, scattering sugar crystals until it met his hand. He stuffed it into his pocket. Thomas had good reason to be paranoid about where his blood ended up.
“I will come if there is trouble,” Thomas confirmed, this time to Pepper.
“I’ll see you later,” he told his daughter, who continued to look airy in a glittering, not-crying kind of way. Thomas stared at her for several seconds and then turned, limping off toward the door he had come through before. He opened it to a cold embrace of empty, empty air, and then shut the door gently behind him, leaving the building as it was before.