Elena did it for (hercountry) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-01-06 13:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *log, elena martin-argüelles, pepper potts |
log: elena & pepper potts
Who: Elena & Pepper
What: a meeting about Stark Industries potentially supporting the Teresita Project.
Where: Brooklyn, Elena's office place.
When: Christmasy time, jusy after, while Elena has Teresa.
Warnings: None
The closer the season slid through holidays, the more charitable the air felt. Stark Industries was not predisposed toward declaring its initiatives or its inclinations. Donations were understood to exist on the part of large corporations, perhaps for tax purposes or creative accounting. Corporate social responsibility, or reputation. Stark was loud and defiantly present on the street with the new release, budgets were up and talk-shows buzzed with discussion of the new features. But there were no press-releases about where Stark money trickled into the system and how. What it purchased was never a photo opportunity with the CEO: the CEO preferred being snapped drinking than being philanthropic. Pepper suspected that it was inspired by a deep-seated discomfort with falsity, with manipulation, with using what could be done for good, for selfish gain.
There was an entire division within Stark given over to the charitable. The tax lawyers sat in it as much as those who came to work (with a water-tight non-disclosure agreement signed) for the benefit of doing good. Pepper flitted through any number of areas of the business, but the terse sense that despite his return from Malibu, Tony could disappear once more was unsettling. It was a single application she picked up from the in-tray in a meeting with one of the division heads, and a single application she chose to look into.
Post-traumatic stress. Survivors’ guilt. It resonated the way jingle-bells jangled through Christmas, present but an undercurrent instead of an evident, neon light. It was small; it was new. The funding application had been made relatively recently. The premises were Brooklyn and Manhattan had long left itself in the rear-view as the town-car drew close to the curb and Pepper swung out from the backseat, impeccably high heels first. Wealth was made all the more ostentatious in the small, unassuming premises; the suit was black instead of cream but the cut was quietly expensive as were the shoes. When she pressed the bell, the icy wind began to cut in past the Italian wool; the car idled at the corner.
Elena was no stranger to the business of fundraising. Her time in Washington D.C. had been as much about shaking the right hands with the right senators as it had been about recognizing the less redeemable lobbyists. Despite thriving in a profession that she'd spent half of her life in, politics was not something that Elena felt especially adept at. She'd began her military career as a medic first and foremost, but there came a time when she had a child, built a family, and being on the front lines wasn't as easy a sacrifice as it might have originally been. Thats when she volleyed for the job at the capital, working in Veterans Affairs, and she got it because of a pristine military record and a face that made old men dig into their donation pockets just a little bit deeper. Elena didn't mind that part, but in time, she did begin to see the deceit, the checks cut behind closed doors, the vets who needed help and were turned away because the money supposedly wasn't there. After a friend of hers ate his own gun, thats when she resigned with the intention of starting her own project, helping in her own way.
But that had been in another world, and what had began as only an idea there, was actually solidified here. The paperwork was legitimate, the lawyers were on board, the rent was paid on the little office space. Elena didn't have a secretary yet, and thats why she made her own appointments and answered her own doorbells. She answered this one in neat black, perhaps too much black, but the camisole underneath her little suit jacket actually leaned a little more into the blue. It softened the monotone palette to a degree. Elena's hair was freshly lightened, ends bronzed and coppered with fine strips of true blond that intermingled like fingers wove. Her hair was pulled away from her face, but not in a complicated updo. Just clipped back at the nape of her neck. She didn't wear lipstick, but she wore a wedding ring. Gold that she'd put away for a few weeks but reconsidered once here. She just tried it back on once and awhile when she was nervous. She spun it, thinking. So it was still on her hand when she opened the door on this cool afternoon.
"Hello," warm. Real, something that said she might still be new to this kind of thing. Hopeful, an eyebrow twitched when she asked, "Ms. Potts?" It was her only appointment for the day, one that Elena knew was more important than anything else she had scheduled over the course of this entire week. She stepped back from the door, green carpet and pale walls with a couple of small office rooms stacked on each side. The door to the first one on the right was open, wooden desk neatly arranged with folders and post-it notes and a picture of a laughing child in a frame, crayola drawings tacked to the wall like they got switched out too often to make use of any frame. "I'm Elena Martin-Argüelles." She allowed the woman to step inside, door closed tightly back into the jamb that stuck like new paint on an old frame. Inside it was heat warm.
The world of politics was hardly warm and fuzzy and it had been built upon ideals that had begun to corrode almost immediately after the edifice had been constructed. Pepper had shaken hands with more men who had interests beyond representation than she could count, but she smiled instinctively at the woman on the doorstep, tawny-gold hair and a business-smart sleek exterior that privately, Pepper admired. She noticed the brief touch of indigo beneath the black, wondered if this woman whose biography would suggest more familiarity with the front-line than board-rooms, was more colorful than she appeared.
“Yes, Ms. Potts. Pepper,” she said smoothly but with genuine warmth, and she stepped across the threshold into the space. It was small but it had been used well. There was no extravagance which would suggest thoughtless use of funds (for some charities, expensive surroundings encouraged checkbooks to open; for others, it made them wonder why they were being asked to open them in the first place) but quiet taste in the fittings. Pepper’s shoes balanced on carpet, lipstick-red soles flashing as she moved within the space to permit the door to be closed.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Martin-Argüelles.”
Elena didn't do colors, her life was a long string of fatigue dirt and muted khaki. Even the officer uniform was a monotone blue that better qualified as gray , the only pop of color being the service stripes and combat badges earned over the decades. Now, she tried for color. It was a learning experience, and it came only in stages. Some gloves here, a scarf, a camisole. Her shoes were dark, her pants were dark, she didn't know about lipstick aside from the commercials that spun the illusion of beauty late at night. She'd lightened her hair recently, bits and pieces, finding her civilian status in these kinds of small doses. She was trying. She wasn't as pale as Pepper, as light of hair as Pepper, or as put together as Pepper, but competition wasn't Elena's thing. She was quick learner, not a second guesser.
"Please, um," a brief stumble as she stepped aside to gesture toward her office. Right there, warmer than the hallway because of the personal touches. "This way, take a seat. Thank you for meeting with me, I can only imagine how hectic Stark Industries' schedule is." Sincerity was there, "I truly appreciate it."
Stark Industries was always hectic and the gathering impetus of the holiday season did nothing to slow it down. But Pepper smiled graciously, and she said nothing of schedules: this had fitted in because she had made it and because the appointment had been locked in among the flurry of other appointments the minute it had been made. Pepper dressed well because she was expected to dress well, because the company’s image was one she took with her and because she could. Competition was not something of lipstick shade or heel height, more the look in someone’s eyes as they saw you come across a room: Pepper knew her failings all too well.
“Thank you,” she said and she noticed each of the small touches in the room that were the woman opposite her rather than the business itself. They were warm, and it gave the space something of a personal nature that went further than the touch of blue beneath all that black. “I wanted to come, so thank you for seeing me. Do you have the financials to hand?” And yes, her smile was warm, and her voice was clear but Pepper was a businesswoman through and through.
"I do," Elena confirmed as the front drawer of her desk was drawn open with the production of manila. Now that Elena's daughter was staying with her for the week, a week where school was out, that meant that Teresa spent a lot of time at the office with her mother. Elena was too new to the city, and too busy with her foundation to seek out a reputable daycare service… and besides, Elena didn't like the idea of having Teresa any further away from her than she needed to be. There was no secretary yet, so the adjoining room to Elena's office, the one with the door closed and a musical echo of cartoons, that was Teresa's play place during the day. Elena took her out for lunch every afternoon, and there were long walks through the park and a solid hour spent on the playground before any of Elena's scheduled meetings were to begin, that always ensured a good two or more hour nap for Teresa in the spare office, her Dora blankets spread out across the soft carpet. The naps naturally meant that Teresa was staying up later than she was allowed to at her father's house, but it was Christmas break, and Elena didn't see the harm in it. She didn't see the harm in late night movies or Sabado Gigante, a bowl of popcorn or chips shared under the same comforter until both of the Martin-Argüelles ladies fell asleep, exhausted from laughter and full tummies. No, Elena didn't see anything wrong with the way that she was spending time with her daughter, but a significant part of her dreaded Cris' return from his work assignment. He'd always been stricter, he'd always wanted things to be just a little more perfect than Elena knew how.
Thoughtfully, Elena passed the folder to Pepper and waited for her to open and flip through the pages of that proposal. "There will be no profit, you naturally understand. But… also, we request that any and all donations remain privatized and not publicized. I know an association with Stark Industries could bring a great deal of awareness to Teresita, but corporate affiliation is not something we aspire to be a part of." That was explained gently, in case such things had not been made clear in the emails and phonecalls already exchanged.
Pepper liked children. She liked them a great deal more than anyone who wore impeccably tailored, pure white wool was meant to like children but her desire for them had largely been subsumed by work. She believed them to be people: small people, but people with autonomy and preferences and moderate failings when it came to manners, until they were taught otherwise. Now she listened to the treacle-sweet tinkle of cartoon music from behind a door with an ear for such a small person on the premises and looked again at the unrelieved black of the woman in front of her with new eyes.
She opened the manila folder but did not need to read a great deal. Stark had its own resources when it came to new investments, and a scrupulously good financial investigator had combed over this particular asset for records. It didn’t matter what the numbers said. But her eyebrows rose briefly during the little speech and she closed her fingers, ringless over one another and smiled faintly. “Stark does not publicize its donations,” she explained in a voice that was quiet, but carried weight. “Any association would need to be strictly private. We have confidentiality agreements to that effect.”
She flicked through the papers within the folder. “It would appear our interests are in alignment.” The smile was professional.
Elena watched patiently as the woman in black paged through the folder. Elena didn't hold her breath, but there was a tension in her shoulders that could have been perceived as uncertainty. At the end, Pepper smiled, and it was the professional kind. Elena knew professional smiles could mean many things, words that said yes while a phone call in the car said no, too risky, no profit, etc. Elena folded her hands and waited for a moment. When Pepper finished reading, the tension in Elena's shoulders eased and the woman settled back into her chair. She placed her hands on the table, diamond wedding ring glinting forever more.
"I'm glad. That means a lot, and I appreciate you coming all of this way. I suppose our lawyers do the rest?" That is how things worked in Washington DC anyway, and Elena knew that donations could be held up in escrow for long periods of time, but the woman's promise made thoughts of any wait seem reasonable. "I appreciate you coming all of the way out here today." The papers could have easily been faxed over, but Pepper Potts had obviously wanted to come here on her own and make her own judgements. Elena respected that in a different way than she respected the black suit with the dangerous heels.
The flash of light that spun off the tiny diamonds in Elena’s ring was cataloged and noticed in the way Pepper noticed everything else about this place. The ring (the woman) was not ostentatious, there was no siphoning of funds publicly away from the organization to the woman who headed it. Pepper did not think of youth or femininity when she looked at the woman across the desk from her; she thought of the clarity of vision and of the paperwork that had been put into her hands. She closed the manila over the financials, and set it neatly to one side, on the edge of the desk.
“Our lawyers draw up a contract,” she agreed, touching fingertips to the edge of the folder. “They’re far better at this than I am.” But she had wanted to see, to get a sense for the place and for the project, something more than an application for funding that was sheets of paper and black and white. There was something about the place that made her inhale, and she didn’t mind travel in a town car gusting heat at the side of the curb. “Do I show myself out?”
"Its not a rough neighborhood, but I'll walk you out." The words came with a smile that substituted for a laugh. It was the kind of smile, or maybe it was the empathy in her eyes that said Elena wasn't the kind of woman who got to laugh often. This business, the subject matter that she dealt with everyday both in counseling and in her personal life didn't offer a lot of reasons for humor. And even if she smiled for comfort, or because it was expected, a smile for smile's sake, hers was a good one. Elena was sincere, the Teresita Project was sincere, and she was hoping that Pepper Potts -- with her elegant hair and immaculate shoes -- was sincere as well. Elena had spent too much time in the bureaucratic and military fundraising world to be anything close to naive. But she tried to avoid cynicism whenever it reared. She inherenty trusted in people. Maybe she hadn't been in this Hotel, in this world long enough, but she also believed that people were inherently good. She was aware of the fact that her husband thought she was a fool for it, but Elena didn't want to be like him. She didn't want her daughter to grow up like that, believing in human monsters and not trusting.
Elena had seen enough terror in the war, she wanted things to be different now, here. And she intended to make it so.
Standing from her desk, Elena moved for the door of the little office and held it open for Pepper before making that short walk down the hall where the main door would once again open to a blustering New York. "Stay warm," Elena offered in goodbye, maternal without even realizing it.
She took a couple of paces out onto the steps and watched Pepper get into the sleek car before heading back inside the office where Teresa came walking out of the room she'd been playing in. Or napping, by the looks of it. "Tengo hambre," she said with a yawn. Elena smoothed the girl's sleep-mussed hair and kissed the top before gesturing for the little girl to collect her coat. "Then lets get something to eat, Teresita. How about pizza?" And the girl's brown eyes widened excited with a nod before coats were drawn on, doors were locked up, and the pair headed for the little spot around the block that sold by the slice.