silver mckellar and tony stark are (silverandsteel) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-09-13 22:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | iron man, rose red |
Who: Silver and Max
What: Two spies being disturbingly honest. And paint.
Where: Max's warehouse (WAREHOUSES)
When: After that conversation on the journals I'm too lazy to find.
Warnings: Swears.
The warehouse was off the residential area of the strip, just at the start of the commercial district, while still being zoned for both. Max had, when she moved to Las Vegas, intended on getting a house. A real one, like the one she'd spent absolutely no time in as a kid, but that her mother had always stayed behind at when Max moved around the world with the General. Maybe she'd learn how to garden. Maybe she'd teach Amanda how to garden when she came to visit. More likely, they'd kill all the plants and Amanda would explain to her about desert climates being right for catus.
That had been the intention, but the real estate agent had showed her the old, partially furnished warehouse first, all because Max wanted a "fixer-upper" to distract her from things, and she'd fallen in love with the old place. So, now, she was renovating an old warehouse-turned-home, and she was fairly sure this was a better fit for her than the garden anyway. There was tons of room, which would be a definite plus when Amanda came to visit. Her daughter was at the age where she wanted to find Narnia in every closet, and an old place like the warehouse offered plenty of nooks and crannies for adventure. But she still needed a room that was suitable for a five year old, and she needed it completed within two weeks. No problem; she was on it. She'd found a DIY about building a circular frame, and there was a circular mattress in the fresh frame, special ordered and still in plastic. There were two paint buckets in the room, one bright orange and one bright blue, and the tent that was draped across the waiting bed was a sky blue with orange stars.
She'd been working for a few hours, decked out in a tanktop and shorts, and there was a beer sweating on the windowsill and Travis Tritt crooning from the ipod in the corner. The window was open onto the street, and the music carried in the Vegas heat.
It was an unconventional meeting location, but she wanted to feel Silver McKellar out. And she could use a hand with the paintbrush. She knew enough about the other man not to be scared of him. Her fighting skills matched his, and there wasn't anything in his dossier that made her think he would kill her. Even if he made her, that wasn't his style. Everything indicated that he'd blackmailed his way out of hell to find some kind of peace. He wasn't going to go for her in a child's room. And if she misjudged? Then she deserved the bullet. After all, this was what she did, what she was good at. And she had a sneaking suspicion her read on him was going to result in a "no can do" to Davis. But she'd cross that bridge when she got there.
Silver had spent decades with the Company, and he’d given it more than most people gave their marriages. He was very much aware that he could not retire his sense of self from what his life had made it to be, and while his enforced (on his side, not theirs) separation from his employers had been expertly planned and executed, he did not entirely attempt to become a different person. Silver governed his actions, and he tried to live a truthful, inoffensive life, at least one with a decent amount of honor. He was able to do this by sitting in the center of a deeply complex web of lies; by knowing truths that powerful people did not want anyone to know. He used these people against each other to learn more secrets, and half of them didn’t even know he was behind it.
Many people would call him a traitor for even daring to think such a thing, much less do it, but Silver easily justified it in his mind by focusing on the end, not the means. Silver just wanted to be left alone. As long as he was in good health and had no cause to fear for his safety or anyone he called friend, then the proper secrets would stay secret. If Silver came to an abrupt end, a domino effect would paralyze half the Agency and probably most of the government in one stroke. He was an asset to be handled with kid gloves, and he was very much aware that they were going to be watching him very, very closely, probably for the rest of his life. He came to expect a certain amount of interference, a general lack of privacy, and he was willing to accept that just so he could get on with his life. It was preferable to spending the next some-odd years looking over his shoulder.
Therefore Silver could be fairly blase about visiting someone he barely knew. He had enemies, but none of them were so forthright, and with an act of will, he could accept a story on the surface until someone proved him wrong. He did not travel armed, and when he showed up at the suspiciously well-positioned warehouse, he did it without any prior research, in old jeans and an even older shirt. He thumped casually on the door and stepped back to look at the vantage points. (No point in being stupid when you’re being peaceable.)
Her yell of "COME IN" carried from the upstairs window on the third floor, and her brown hair was the only thing visible as it fell into her face as she pulled back from said open window. That was the one downfall of the old warehouse - lots of stairs. The door was unlocked, and she wasn't worried about anyone other than him walking in. She wasn't armed at present, but that didn't mean an assailant would be able to get the upper hand on her either. If she had heard footsteps without the knock? She could have been out the open window, into her own bedroom, armed and with the muzzle of a gun at the back of someone's head before they even realized what was happening. Maybe it was smug, but she'd spent all of her life doing this shit; she could do it in her sleep.
She sat on the sill, beer in her hand and the obvious making of a child's room around her, and she waited. Her bare foot was propped on the sill in front of her, her arm around her knee. Seated, her posture wasn't military. She'd done enough deep cover to walk like a civilian if she wanted to, to pass for one; she just hadn't decided if it was worth bothering yet. She was just a woman in her early thirties, country music and a beer, who looked fit for her age.
Silver really hated being in a place like this, a place that set all his old instincts ajar even when he had long decided that if death was coming it would be sharp, sudden, and without the possibility of preventing it. He felt stupid walking into it, and he felt naked and foolishly unarmed with the stairs overhead, the blind corners, the empty windows. The music only served to cover up things he would have preferred to hear, like footsteps and signs of real inhabitation. Silver took his hands away from his jeans and pressed his palms against the air in front of his hips, grounding. Three breaths and he moved forward into the warehouse, sighing at himself and the situation in one long exhale. “Hello,” he called up into the expanse.
Silver looked around at the walls, carefully closed the door behind him and threw the bolt, for good measure. He was in, and so all he did was slow down someone coming after him. All of this war-thinking made him somewhat testier than usual, and he frowned, aware of it. Silver climbed the stairs a little slower than he really intended. “This is some place,” he said to the invisible voice.
There was no one else in the warehouse, no one to be frightened of, no steps from around the corners and no one breathing at the back of his neck. She appeared in the doorway at the top of the stairs when he took longer than he should, and she brushed a splash of orange paint off her cheek as she looked down the stairs. "It's great, isn't it?" she asked, unable to get a good look at his face yet and unaware he wouldn't like the place. It was masculine, a gentleman's club for years, and it never occurred to her that a guy wouldn't like it. Paisleys and flowers? That made men uncomfortable. Dark wood and crumbling paint? No fucking way. "The realtor showed it to me, and I fell in love. I was looking for something to work on, a project, and I definitely got a project," she called down harmlessly.
She caught his posture then, his discomfort, and she frowned. She could pretend she didn't notice, but she decided against it a second later. "Is something wrong? Hate country?" she asked with a grin.
Silver was infinitely more relaxed when he physically saw the person he was talking to. He wasn’t reassured because she was a woman, or because her cheek was decorated in neon, but simply because she was human, and he didn’t have to look for bait or trap when someone was standing right in front of him; if there was bait or trap, she would be one or the other. No need to look. He smiled at her, and it was a genuine smile. Despite the years on his face and at the edges of his eyes, Silver had a generous smile and under his old clothing he put effort into his body--something that made promises of retirement a little less believable. “No, it just felt abandoned for a bit there.”
He had, actually, been expecting a man, but he wasn’t bothered to be wrong. On the contrary, his expression turned faintly admiring in the most harmless (and therefore clearly perceptible) of ways. Climbing upward toward her to see what she was working on, he put his hand out when she was close enough to shake it. He wasn’t troubled that she had the higher ground, and his hands were so rough from repeated scrubbings with mechanic’s soap that the callouses weren’t there to detect.
Her hands were calloused in places he would recognize as gun holds, but there wasn't anything she could do about that. She wasn't expecting the handshake; men didn't shake a woman's hand often. Most men wouldn't think anything of the places rubbed smooth by triggers and grips, but she knew he would. Intelligent brown eyes focused on him for the barest hint of a second as she shook his hand in return, her grip sturdy and no real indication that she was already playing with her cover in her head, trying to figure out if it was worth the stretch. She was good at sizing people up, and the man walking up her stairs was going to be more of a problem than anyone she could imagine. She might have an easier time bringing Brandon in than this guy.
She could tell, too, that he was surprised by her gender; most people that only knew her on paper were. There was nothing particularly feminine about her speech or writing, nothing to give her away as a female. She liked that in a strange way, the fact that she refused to bend to societal norms. "I'm working on making it feel less abandoned," she said, though she knew that wasn't what had spooked him; abandoned houses didn't play Travis Tritt and smell like Meyer lemons. She tucked a long strand of brown hair behind her ear after pulling her hand back. "You drink domestic?" she asked, turning for the bedroom.
Silver was more surprised that she gave him her hand knowing what he would glean from it than what he actually came away with. He was no more threatened by the familiarity with a gun than he was by her physical appearance. To date the warehouse itself had been the only thing to really set him off his game, and the effect had almost entirely melted away. (Almost.) Silver sketched his eyebrows upward and his hand clasped hers evenly, a dry, extremely strong grip that took in most of her character in a few crucial seconds. He let her see that he was impressed, and then he smiled again. A new watcher. Nice.
Silver wandered after her, not too close, but easily enough. “Yeah,” he said, readily, pretty much willing to take whatever she offered to stave off the heat and absorb more of what she was--or at least what she was willing to offer. “Quite a job,” he added, looking up at the unfinished walls and rafters and wondering how people could criticize that he lived in a garage when he could be living in a place like this. “I can see why you need an extra hand.”
And just like that, she knew she'd been made. "I'm not reporting on you," she said, because there wasn't any point in keeping up the charade. She'd spent her entire life undercover, for the most part. She knew when it was time to give up the game in favor of a different tactic. "Not that you care, or you would have left when the first wave of people came to report on you," she said bluntly. Max liked blunt. It was a language she'd always spoken well. She walked into the room with that statement, and she grabbed one of the beers from the ice chest near the door and handed it out to him.
When he said it was quite a job, she looked around and tried to see it through his eyes. "You hate it," she said with a grin, one that was dimple and feminine confidence that it had taken her a few years to recover after Brandon. "That's alright. I never did need a man's approval," she said, reclaiming her seat on the windowsill, intending to finish her break, even with him there. "My kid's coming in a few weeks, and I want to have her room done at least," she added, a confidence, a weakness, and a rather fucking big one. It was intentional, of course, and he would know it, but it didn't change what it was.
Silver’s face registered a kind of congenial doubt, as if he had decided to go along with the game. He found it highly unlikely that somebody this smart, with a location like this and gun callouses like that, would not be reporting on him. Especially since she knew, clearly, that there was always something to report and someone to report it to. He took the beer and cracked it open, displaying an ease but not a habit. “There’s nothing to report, happily,” he replied, not bothering to try to project truth but just letting it sit there on his tongue.
“I don’t hate it,” he replied, again smiling, which he did easily. “It is simply not... me. I like a cohesiveness of space. This is...” he concentrated. “I’m not sure exactly, but not cohesive.” His smile laughed for a moment, and then vanished all in one movement when she mentioned a kid. He stared at her, and the willingness to play along was gone. No agent would ever bring their child in the field, and only the nastiest ones would ever bring one, period. Children made small but very bright little targets, and Silver didn’t know any agent that went anywhere without an assignment of some kind. The surface of Silver’s calm eyes rippled like a pebble tossed into water, and he frowned at her, waiting for further explanation.
"If there was, they knew it before I ever got here," she said, taking a sip of her peer after watching him crack his own open. His explanation of his feelings about the place made her grin. "Used to be a gentleman's club. You're supposed to feel more at home here than I am," she informed him, in case he wasn't aware that she was the female in the room. "Let me guess, your place is zen and empty and minimalist? Nah, did that. So not my style. I like mess, but then I'm not exactly cohesive." She said it all with the tone of a woman who had lived through her neediest years, and who had come out the other side with an understanding of herself and something like conviction.
When his expression shifted, she just watched his reaction. Oh, she knew what he was reacting to, and his reaction told her a lot about him. He made a judgement call, then he retracted said judgement call in favor of more information. She wondered if that's how he worked as an asset. Risky. She wasn't sure she'd like that in a partner, but then she wasn't exactly a good partner either. "I'm not in the field," she informed him. "This is home. I'm not using cover. Max Main is my name, and I'm not blackmailing anyone to use it. This is home for the time being, and I'm glad not to be under right now, and I get to see my kid a few times during the summer," she explained, her voice going tighter than it had since he'd arrived. "Think I'm the kind of ass to take my kid into the field, huh?" she asked, wondering if he knew anyone who had, or if that was just a natural reaction to mothers on the job.
“My place is new. It is empty because I haven’t had time to find anything that really fits in it. I like functionality and things that are comfortable, and that usually means things don’t match. Cheaper to decorate, though,” he added, taking a drink of the beer after sternly telling himself not to be paranoid about drinks with strangers. Really, after that mess with Wren’s dagger and Loki’s fire, he was allowing the paranoia to get out of hand. He smiled at the barb about blackmailing to use his name. It was real amusement, not mocking, turning up his mouth and pressing it back into a five o’clock shadow that always came several hours early.
Silver thought about her final question. It took a long time. He wasn’t bothered that her question hung in the air, waiting for him to resolve it, nor did he allow the increasing pressure to thicken his thoughts. “I think,” he said, finally, “that I’m flattered your assessment of this environment is safe enough that you would bring your child.” He was quite serious, even through another drink.
In her defense, Max was just now learning about the shit that Las Vegas dished out. No one at the agency had known anything more about the hotel than the fact that it existed, and she hadn't exactly made her own headcase agency knowledge, nor did she intend to. "I like getting my hands dirty," she said of the work it would take to get the place to where it needed to be. "I figured that out once a long time ago. Things went to shit, and I painted a room, and it felt better, focusing. I've liked it ever since," she said honestly.
His response about the environment wasn't actually what she was expecting, and she was feeling pretty sure he meant Las Vegas in general, and not the warehouse, which had top notch security. "No environment is safe, Silver," she said with practicality. "Here, D.C., New York, it's all the same. I'm keeping her safe while she's here, not the location. I can't unbirth her, and not all of us want to blackmail our way out, so this is how it is. She lives with her father seventy-five percent of the year, and that's me making one hell of a fucking concession for safety." She took another swig of her beer. "We clear?"
Silver nodded when Max explained her own grounding tactic. He liked that one, and he’d developed away from habitual wide movement only because there had been too many times in the field where he could not indulge in anything that would actively change his environment. It was all in his mind, now, and a good thing, too. As a spy, sometimes Silver was sure that his mind was the only thing he really had that was his. Sometimes not even that.
Again with the blackmail issue. It was interesting the way she kept returning, hinted at envy, and that surprised him. Most people regarded his actions with disgust, or more rarely, confusion and awe. He quirked a brow at her, not amused, just perplexed, taking her in. It seemed important to her that he clearly understand her motivation, and that strengthened the idea that there actually was a child. God, that was a troubling thought. “How old is she?”
"Six," Max said, her expression softening a second later. "She started first grade last week," she added, unnecessary details that came from not being able to talk about that part of her life with most people. She kept it at that, though her expression said she could go on for ages if given the opportunity. "I would ask if you have any, but I know you don't," she said openly. "I know Thakkar," which was a small confession, and it was one she wasn't actually sure about. She hadn't been able to read Shailee about him, and she had a feeling Shailee was hiding things from the agency when it came to the man standing in front of her. It begged the question of why. Silver was good looking, without a doubt, which Max was more than willing to admit, but Shailee tended to go for women instead of men, and boys instead of men. Silver was neither female, nor was he a boy.
Silver softened too. He liked children; he didn’t know enough of them to know whether they liked him too, but he liked to think they might, if they got the chance. Sometimes he thought children liked people more willing to play silly games--he’d never been a silly games type person. (Unless you counted being a spy.) Some of that expression lingered in his face when she mentioned Shailee, which said more about him than it said about his former student. “Really? As a friend, or just professionally?” He was asking to carry on the conversation, because from a spy’s perspective any connection had to be assumed solid and informative. “Does this mean you’re not going to ask me any questions you don’t already know the answer to?” Silver wandered around the circuit of the room with his beer, looking out windows and peering at the remains of old decorations meant to interest men who died long ago.
She put her empty beer bottle on the sill, and she reclaimed the orange-coated roller she'd been using on one of the prepped walls. She nodded toward the other one, the one with the window. "That one gets blue, if you want to earn that beer," she said. "Met her on the job. Got called in to help her in the field. She's a lot greener than I can ever remember being," she said of Shailee, though there was fondness in her voice. Shailee was all emotion and her heart on her sleeve, and Max had given that up a long time ago with Brandon; she still liked it in other people though. "She likes you. I can tell, because she wasn't very forthcoming," she said truthfully. She saw no point in lying, not at this point in the conversation. "I'm not here to ask you questions," she added, stretching to get the roller as far up as she could without needing to break her only broom to use as an extender. "I wanted to get a feel for you, not interview you," she said truthfully.
Silver went after the paint cans to find the aforementioned blue with a lot more gusto than he’d gone after the beer. He set it aside, not half-empty, and bent to settle on his heels and examine the labels. Pushing his palm against one lid, he tipped his chin down to eye it before moving on to the next one. He was enjoying himself, and didn’t bother hiding it. It had been a very long time since he could talk about certain things, Shailee not being the least of them. He looked up, eyes laughing, at her last comment. “Oh yeah? How am I feeling?”
"A lot like my ex, actually," she said truthfully. "Too smart. Not giving anything. Definitely good at the closed off thing. Calm waters." She pointed her roller at him. "That makes you trouble," she informed him, as if he didn't know that. "But you're the oldest person I've talked to this week that isn't my handler, and that's a nice change," she admitted. She didn't go into it, but she had gotten used to a certain level of calm in her life. Luke and Jack were, individually, more emotionally than Manda ever was. And combined? They were like a maelstrom. And even her more settled friends had turned out to be more emotional than expected, like Laura. And then there was the hiding everything. "Did you know many people here before you came out? People with head things, I mean," she said, not up on the vernacular yet.
Silver looked perplexed. It was never good when people started comparing you to their exes, in any form. It was either pedestal or gutter when that happened, and neither was a good thing for Silver. He looked away from her to think a little more, undoubtedly making her even more sure of her assessment, and finally fished out the blue from its fellows. Standing with it in one hand, he eyed her roller as if considering what best to use to take it apart. “What is it you like me to give, in this scenario?” He simply shook his head at her final question, not willing to let the topic change just yet.
She turned. She looked at him. And she laughed. Head thrown back, an honest laugh. "Quit that. I already know everything I need to about you, Silver. Just relax. I'm not here for information," she said, though she didn't actually expect him to believe her. "I wanted to learn what kind of man you were. I'm really good at reading people, which means I've already seen what I was looking to see. Everything from here on out is painting and beer, so paint or drink," she said, reaching for a fresh beer and popping the cap.
It appeared this agent went with her gut way more than Silver did. Silver could and did trust his instincts, but it wasn’t all that common of an occurrence. He looked at her, somewhat fascinated, warier than a moth with a flame but intrigued by the phenomenon nonetheless. He didn’t join in her laughter, letting her have it for herself and enjoying the sound of it. Silver used a nearby screwdriver to pry up the lid on the paint can once he had it over the dropcloth. “I feel like I passed an aptitude test, and you’re about to tell me that I’m most suited to landscaping,” he commented, using a stick from the heap to stir and then pouring a cool streak of blue into the tray at his feet.
She watched him, and she grinned after a second. "No. I don't think you're the landscaping type. Construction, maybe, but you can't control plants that way," she said, and it wasn't absolutely clear if she was joking or not. "Are you planning on answering my question about whoever is in your head, or are we still talking about our jobs?" she asked, setting her beer back down and reclaiming her roller. She turned her back on him to set the roller to the wall again, completely unconcerned with giving him her back. He left the CIA for a reason and, after meeting him, she was trusting her gut that the reason had something to do with not killing people. He wasn't about to shoot an unarmed mother in the back, not this guy.
Silver wasn’t going to shoot anybody in the back. Well, no one that didn’t deserve it. He also wasn’t armed, and with the thin shirt and jeans he’d tried to be fairly forthcoming about that fact. He just sighed and shook his head again. He did like constructing things, things like puzzles, furniture, and sometimes people, when they needed it. “You didn’t ask me a question. You said did I know anybody before here, and no, I didn’t.” Another headshake reminiscent of his last to emphasize the negative. “You’re asking what Door I have?” Silver wondered if Shailee had figured that out. A good camera shot of his phone would give that away, he thought--but then he didn’t know how advanced Tony’s tech was. Maybe they would theorize he got it from Germany or something. They were working on some fairly advanced gear.
She turned and gave him an incredulous look, one tipped with laughter. "Sentences that start with 'did' are questions. Did you know anybody here before is a question. Who taught you to be such a pain in the ass?" she asked, the grin not faltering. She was used to men who were pains in the ass. They were everywhere in this profession. "No, I didn't ask what door you have. I asked if you knew other people like us, but don't worry about it. You just keep painting over there, and when you find a topic of conversation that doesn't make you startle like a deer, you tell me," she offered easily. Once upon a time, she would have taken his distrust personally, but she didn't anymore. She had no idea what he thought she was going to do, short of holding a gun to someone's head, and she obviously wasn't going to do that, not when she'd given up her home base so easily; even he had to know that.
Silver laughed. "I shook my head no,, no other people. I bet you were looking the other way. Alright, next time you spring the interview questions about Passages, you get full vocal cooperation." Silver rolled into the paint to get an even distribution and eyed his wall, planning his approach. He didn't much like being compared to a deer, but then he thought most men probably consider themselves bears or wolves. Silver kind of liked fish. "To an extent, anyway." What he expected her to do was just what she would do: report back to whoever it was she reported to. Silver had doctored enough reports with his own behavior to fall to it naturally.
"Why don't you just ask?" she asked plainly. Ask what she was there for. It was a novel approach, maybe, but Max knew when to lie, and she knew when to come clean, and she was pretty good at figuring out which had a better chance of working. This wasn't Jack Corvus, and it wasn't Luke Henry. Though, there was something they had in common. Or had in common, since she was fairly sure it was past tense. "Or I'll just tell you? I got two names for who you're close to in Las Vegas, and I didn't pass either on. I have people I want protected, just like you do. A girl named Justine, who seems way too young for you, and a local hooker you're apparently sleeping with, except you're not sleeping with her at all." She paused. "Now? Want to ask why?"
Silver had this horrible tendency to envision his life as a field report. He wasn't surprised by Max's terminology, especially for Wren, but somehow it still got under his skin and rankled. He frowned, but when he thought about it he supposed he shouldn't correct her. In the end he did anyway. "I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't call her that. It's not her profession." Silver pressed his roller to the wall and started working out from shoulder height in a star pattern. It was soothing work, and he liked doing it, so he kept on as he spoke. "And Justine is a friend. Ask why... what, why you're interested?" He looked over his shoulder at her, just a glance, and then back at the paint. "I assumed someone tipped you off. That not right?"
"That's how she was described to me," she said of Wren, and she put the paint roller down and gave up painting altogether. She picked up her beer, and she took a few long swallows. "I've known Wren since she was a kid, Silver. My ex is Luke's father. As for Justine, I know she's just a friend. I haven't ever seen you two within proximity of each other, and I know she's just a friend." She didn't add how she knew that, because talking about doors was something they'd stricken from the list of possible topics. "Why I'm interested," she confirmed. "I'm supposed to report back about whether or not there's a chance you'd come back. My report is going to say fuck, no, unless you feel strongly about convincing me otherwise."
Silver kept on going, spreading paint even when she stopped. He focused on the adhesive sound of the paint sticking to the wall, the fabric of the roller turning into strange little patches of a foreign blue sky. Max’s initial reply sounded a lot like an excuse instead of an apology to him, and he almost discounted what she said following because of it, but Silver realized that he was being a little ridiculous about Wren and everything related to Wren, and instead of being a little boy about it he should be dealing with it like an adult. The slashes of blue over the wall helped smooth some of that over, and he listened as she spoke.
Finally Silver turned, crouching again to settle the roller in the tray and moving to the center of the room. He looked around for something to sit on and dragged that over so that he could sit and regard her with all of his attention. He actually brought his beer with him. “One more reason Luke really doesn’t like me,” Silver said, flashing Max an understanding smile and using the fact to move forward. “If you want to put in your report that I said your version of no, I’d like that,” he added. “It’s my answer and it’s always going to be my answer. I’m not coming back just so some people can sleep easier at night, and if they were smart, they wouldn’t want me unwilling anyway.” It wasn’t a threat, it was a fact. He seemed to be thinking out loud. “They’re wasting resources on me, to be quite honest, but I guess that’s their business.” He shrugged. A drink from the can and then he spread out his legs. There were flecks of blue on his jeans, too bright for the wear. He admired the addition for a second. “I would like to know why they had an agent with so much personal history with Wren to come feel me out, if you’re authorized to say.” It was a direct question.
She watched him go through the motions with the paint. It had taken her a long time to learn to find something to calm her down when she was feeling anything but. Before Amanda it had been easier, no close ties, nothing really worth worrying about losing, no one close enough to matter more than saving her own ass if things went bad on a job. But having a kid had changed all that. And, if she was honest, it changed way before Manda was born. Brandon and Luke had changed it, and it had been hard getting back into a game where being distant was so important. "Dissociating can be a bitch when you're out for awhile," she commented. She'd been there. She knew what it was like.
She didn't expect him to sit down, and she didn't expect him to actually have the conversation, but she had learned to be surprised over the years, and it barely showed. "I haven't seen the kid in five years," she said honestly of Luke. "If I had known he was here, I would have stayed away," she said honestly. "I quit keeping tabs on him intentionally years ago, and I didn't know Wren was here either, not until I got here." She gave him a grin that said she knew how things worked as much as he did. "That doesn't mean my superiors didn't know, though, does it? I didn't even know you knew her until my informant handed over the intel." She took a swig of her beer. "And Luke never likes anyone who has a thing for his trouble magnet." There was old disapproval there, but nowhere near as strong as it had been once. "I wasn't ever a cheerleader for that relationship," she admitted, because there was no point in hiding it. "Neither was his father." She shrugged, because she suspected it was intentional, this match up, just like she knew Corvus was, but she didn't know what anyone expected to gain from it. "You aren't my assignment, though. You're an add-on. I'm not sure if that makes you feel better or worse." She paused. "Why'd you get out?" she asked curiously, not really expecting a straight answer from him.
Silver had been one of those people that was so good at dissociating that he didn't even know that he was doing it until it was years later and he was trying to find a person in himself that didn't exist anymore. You could see it in his eyes, the reality of it, the resignation. Silver fully understood that his attempts to make real connections were fruitless. Something he lost that could not be found again. Even his affection for Wren, it wasn't real enough to get past all those years of taking nothing even when something was offered. Maybe if she'd returned it, or maybe... well. No point in thinking it.
Silver was completely unsurprised that Romeo and Juliet had no fans in their elder generation. In fact, it made him smile slightly. Surely these people, they would realize that their disapproval would only make such a relationship stronger. "I am not a good add-on. But I'm not here for trouble. That's why I got out. Tired of making trouble." He looked up at the ceiling. "Alright, that's not true. Tired of solving other people's troubles."
Max nodded toward him, pointed the beer bottle too. "I was like that," she said of the resignation in his eyes. "Have a kid, and it changes everything," she said truthfully, honestly. "Not that she was planned." The smile that followed was honest, dimples, and the fact that (despite everything) Max wouldn't go back and change the past. "And it's terrifying, which probably doesn't surprise you."
The small smile was met with a questioning look, and it took a second for her to realize it must have been about Luke and Wren. "Yeah, yeah. I know. Not the best way to handle it. We made a lot of mistakes when it came to that kid," she admitted of Luke, before grinning at his explanation that he wasn't an add-on. "You're a shitty add-on, but I have a great handler who'll smooth it over for me," she explained, her expression going more serious a second later. "Whose troubles? I was out for a few years, and then I had a change of heart about some things, so I came back. Making a difference the right way, that's important to me."
Silver didn't hide his reaction to that. It was humor, but bitter humor. It creased his brow and lifted his eyes in an expression of adult, entirely sardonic mirth. It was not an expression anyone had seen on his face for a very long time. He didn't show it to anyone. That expression was Tony's default, but Silver hid it deep under glassy waters, except on special ocassions, when it surfaced to reveal his opinion of his old job. "Anybody who could pay. They could be paying with information, or money, or political power. Maybe they were convenient to whoever is in charge. Could be a bargaining chip, somebody's lover or somebody's son. You fix trouble for those people so that other people can get what they want. You're a good pawn if you live through the experience. Then what? You feel like you've done the right thing?" He lifted his beer in her direction. "Good for you. I never did."
She listened to his thoughts about the job, and she didn't interrupt or openly argue them. "I felt like that about the military, but the CIA has been different. Maybe I got lucky. Maybe I made enough noise coming in that they let me do what I want. Maybe the General has enough pull that I get it easy. I don't know. I do know that I watched a lot of people get their lives fucked to hell by a need to take the legal system into their own hands. I don't want people deciding who lives and dies, not without a system, even if it sucks and is broken. I'm here on recruiting, but I normally work exclusively with terrorist threats. The day they send me after someone who doesn't fit the bill, is the day I have a conversation I don't want to have. Hasn't happened so far. Here's hoping it stays that way."
Silver's eyes went a very long way away. "Here's hoping," he repeated. He was quite earnest. He wanted people who felt good about the job to be doing it. He didn't know that many people who fit that description, but maybe he was just old. Over half the people he'd known when he was a young man, before 9/11, before the home ground was all terrorism threats, they were all dead. A quarter of the remaining half weren't in any condition to do anything but recover what they could. Silver wasn't sure to which group he belonged. He didn't like thinking about it. "I hope your general has a lot of pull." And he hoped that said general wasn't one of the many, many people he had information on. The chances weren't good, but they could be worse. Silver finished his beer and set it down between his feet. He gave her a smile and then went back to the paint.
"The General is my father, and he has about as much pull as you can have without being elected in this country," she said, and there was obviously no love lost there. And, in truth, the chances of Silver having something on General Main were pretty good; Max's father had never cared who he killed, as long as it was for the good of the old U.S.A. - in his estimation. "I spent nearly a decade overseas, in hell for this country, Silver. I don't know how long you were in, but neither of us are as young as we once were. I want to leave this place better than I found it for my kid, and I want to live to see her grow up." She shrugged, and she stood and picked up her roller too, watching his back for a second. "Don't miss any spots," she ordered jokingly, before reaching over and turning the music up again.