silver mckellar and tony stark are (silverandsteel) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-10-05 23:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman, iron man |
Who: Wren and Silver
What: Shopping. Spies.
Where: An antique mall.
When: A while ago. Recently. Whenever.
Warnings/Rating: None
Silver was standing outside the glistening building that housed his apartment as if the air was not melting around him. The heat left a sheen on his forehead and soaked into the linen collar at the back of his neck, and it made his jeans feel heavy on his legs, but he didn’t show any of it on his face, expression distinctly impassive behind the shields of his amber sunglasses. He was watching traffic roll past in the distance with a very, very slight smile, thinking of veins and silver wires running through computers at the same time because the metaphor amused him. It was a distraction technique, and he knew it.
Silver was doing his best to keep hold of the many threads of his existence after this new agent arrived in the midst of Vegas. He had done the same when Shailee had arrived, but Max Main knew as well as he did that Shailee didn’t pose the kind of threat that an experienced agent would. Max maintained that she was not a threat, and Silver maintained that it would be stupid to believe her absolutely. Silver could like someone and destroy their lives in the same moment, and he knew that others could do the same, as impossible as someone like Justine might think it.
Silver was looking forward to seeing Wren. It fused with the worry about her condition and he refused to let a spy’s natural paranoia sour the idea of meeting with her. He just hoped that whatever they bought on this shopping trip wasn’t so completely Wren as to be unbearable when she wasn’t present. Silver thought he had a little better hold on himself than that.
Gus was on a playdate, and Luke was at work, and Wren had taken a taxi to Silver's apartment complex. The ride gave her a chance to think, the quiet a very welcome thing after all the uncertain madness that had been life recently. But things had calmed the tiniest bit, and she could breathe a little, though she knew not to expect it to last very long.
She was dressed in soft, pressed khaki shorts and a camisole in butter yellow, with sandals on her feet and her blonde hair pulled back. It was starting to cool down in Las Vegas, but the dry weather was something Wren was pretty sure she would never get used to. It was nothing like home, where everything smelled like salt and you could catch condensation on your tongue, and it was nothing like Seattle's rainy greys. It was warm, even with Halloween around the corner and pumpkin flavored drinks at every coffee shop. October, and Christmas was so close she could almost feel it, and yet it was sweltering and dry.
The cab idling drew her from her thoughts, and she pushed open the door and asked the driver to stay where he was, unsure if Silver wanted to drive himself, or if he wanted to let someone else do the hard work.
She saw him within seconds, and her smile turned warm and welcoming. His clothing took her back to those thoughts of how sweltering Las Vegas was, and she tipped her head as she approached him. "It's too hot for jeans, Silver," she said, and she looked none the worse for wear. The bandage at her side was thin, barely noticeable through the shirt, and any circles around her eyes were from stress, rather than ill-health.
Silver always felt so mechanical around the much softer, whispier Wren; he had this idea that she was made of something like clouds and cotton candy, and the woman he had first met was almost never in evidence these days. Silver sometimes wondered if they were two separate people, or if his mind made that so. He thought he might have been a lot less blunt and more protective of Wren than he had been of the client he had driven around for months before they had an actual conversation.
Silver shook off the vision and stepped out toward the cab, moving with ease and fluidity, comfortable and grounded. He never looked his height until he got close enough to look down at someone, which he did now with intention and care. “You say that because you’ve never seen my spindly legs,” he said, smiling in a way that his sunglasses almost entirely hid from the world. He put strong arms out and then around her shoulders and upper back. The compact of the embrace was very brief, distinctly friendly in nature, but he knew where she was injured and he took care. His fingers came free of the long tail of her hair as he released her. He smelled of hard soap and clean cloth. “Where are we going to buy all this stuff that I don’t need?” he said, smiling completely now with both sides of his mouth.
She didn't realize what he was thinking, but it wouldn't have surprised her. Keeping up a distant, cold front had been easy when there was no one to thaw for, but Gus had largely changed all that, and the arrival of friends that actually knew who she was had done the rest. Even the bit she saved for work wasn't needed these days, which meant it was too easy to fall back into being who she actually was. She'd always tried to tell him it was a front, that he wouldn't like her nearly as much if he really knew her.
She gave him a look that was all grey-eyes and disbelief. "Silver, I'm pretty sure you work out when no one's looking. You should have tried telling that your legs are too pale for daylight. I would have believed that," she said. The smile made her smile back, and the hu was unexpected, but not unwelcome. She hugged him back, and she tipped her head when he released her. "I'm not going to break," she added, glancing down to her side, which she knew he had intentionally avoided. "We're heading to the antique mall," she said, in case his decision about driving depended on how far they had to go. "Only a mile or two. Take the day off?" she added, motioning to the idling cab, then looking back and playing a soft, friendly hand on his chest. "You look really good," she said honestly. "I'm not used to seeing you smile like that."
Instead of the serene pool of nothing behind the sunglasses, Silver only smiled again. He took a step past her toward the cab, putting a hand in the curve of her lower back to bring her with him, a gentle ushering without insistence. As he did so he said, “What would be the point of working out when no one is looking?” He twitched his chin slightly up and to one side in a show of innocence that only revealed a rather Tony-like twinkle to his eyes. Silver set one elbow on the top of the door, shifting his hips as he waited for her to get in first. “And my legs are too pale for daylight. Like a yeti’s.” He said this with a completely straight face, and he took Tony’s phone out of his back pocket when he sat down in the back of the cab with her. His eyes drifted from the license to the mirror, automatic without worry and then returned to her a few moments later. “How is Gus?”
She moved to the cab at the urging, barely even realizing she was being urged. Despite all recent changes in her life, Wren was still instinctively used to following. She climbed into the cab, and she slid across the seat, while giving the driver directions to the antiques mall she wanted to go to, since Las Vegas had many such creatures. She looked back to the door, when he mentioned his legs being like a yeti's, and she laughed, the sound fairly carefree given recent happenings and the stitches in her side. "You know very well that the point in working out, for someone like you, is to make yourself feel better, healthier, calmer, something-er," she said, because she knew Silver wasn't someone who would work out just to look good in a bathing suit, and yet it was obvious he did work out. She smiled a softer smile then. "Gus is good. Luke had to lie to him while I was away, and I'm pretty sure he has no idea who I am half the time, but we're working on it. His system is all thrown off right now, with Jack gone and me around again."
Silver sat back comfortably on the blue vinyl seats, enjoying the air conditioning as he touched the tips of his fingers to his hairline and smudged the tiny beads of sweat there. He was still smiling. Even when he didn’t put effort into it, it was possible to see the gleam of it behind the sunglasses, which he had yet to know. “Something-er. You should go into philosophy.” Setting his elbow on the inside of the window to his right (Silver seemed to like setting his hands and arms above waist level rather than letting them lie), he ran his fingers over his ear and along the line of his hair at the back of his neck. “Jack,” Silver repeated, a leading tone of very slight inquiry there as he shifted his eyes her way.
She swatted at his arm when he made the teasing comment about philosophy. "I don't hear you disagreeing with me," she said with a hint of triumph, knowing she was right. "Jack is Luke's roommate, and Gus' primary caregiver." She bit her lip, unsure of how much she should offer, and of how much the driver was listening. In the end, it was Tony's involvement in the antidote that made her keep going. "He's from our door, and he got hit with an injection, but it hasn't done anything yet; it's supposed to eventually, but we just don't know when," she explained, glancing once toward the driver guiltily, ensuring he wasn't listening. "So he's gone to stay with someone else, but he's the one who usually gets Gus out of bed, makes meals, and does all that. I don't do it right, which he's not very happy about. It's a work in progress, I think."
Silver did the best he could with his body because it didn’t feel like his when he didn’t keep it in shape, and Tony had taken it down several pegs. For a while, Silver had been under the impression that retirement would allow him to go soft, but it turned out his personality did not allow such a thing. He tried to remain neutral about this issue of Jack. The term “primary caregiver” never settled with him right; probably something from when he was a kid and people got the wrong idea about his mom. “I’m sure you just do it different, Wren, not wrong.” Silver’s good mood made his expressions more malleable. He frowned at the implied criticism of Wren’s parenting even without the full profile of information.
"To a four-year-old who has been through way too much change in his tiny life, anything different is wrong, even the placement of the dinosaur chicken nuggets on his plate," Wren said fondly. She might be having a hard time figuring things out, but that didn't mean she would change it. "It's good, though. I'm always going to feel like an outsider unless I get in there and do it. He's been with Luke and Jack for months, and at his age that's like forever," she explained, trying to wipe that frown off his face with reassurances.
A second later, the taxi stopped, and she reached into the pocket of her dress for the fare, even as she opened her door and stepped out into the Vegas sun. The antique mall was sprawling, a huge thing that made her think of how her maman had liked old things. "My maman used to take us to antique stores all the time when I was little," she admitted, counting out the fare as she waited for Silver to step out of the cab.
The reassurance went a long way, and the frown smoothed out. If Gus was objecting about the small things, it meant the big things were good. Silver remembered the boy as being extraordinarily quiet, and complaining, therefore, must be a good thing. He nodded in agreement after her explanation of Gus’ circumstances, and allowed the subject to drop. Silver avoided anything to do with Luke’s residence or Luke’s responsibilities. It was one set of information that he knew was not his business, and he quelled the spy inside him by reminding himself that such minutia would do him no good. Silver knew that Luke would do his best, and that he meant good by the child, and that was all he had business knowing, except what Wren would tell him.
Sometimes Silver was so fair that he even annoyed himself.
Silver offered a solid bill to the taxi driver over the middle seat to bypass Wren’s attempts to pay, telling him to keep the change and exiting before there was argument. “Us?” Silver asked, curiously. He had a way of leading things with one-syllable repetitions.
Wren watched the frown smooth out, assuming she had placated him with her explanations somehow. And, really, Gus was doing better. Playdates were a regular thing now, and hiding under the bed happened less and less. She needed to bring up the topic of preschool and telling Gus who they were eventually, but she wasn't going to worry about it just then.
She frowned when he paid, and she held out the bills she'd finally managed to count out, as if she expected him to take them. "My maman and I. There are a lot of old antique stores in Key West, a lot of thrift stores too, ones with really old things that were beautiful. When I was very little, I would go in and think my maman was the most gorgeous woman ever, like a queen or a princess, and all the princes paid attention to her." She smiled a little at the memory, a smile that was a little bittersweet. "I was young, and I didn't understand yet," she explained, nodding toward the door and leading the way inside.
The antique mall smells like old wood, old drapes, old dust, and it reminded Wren so much of being little that it hurt. It showed on her face for a second, before she turned back to Silver. "What do you already have?" she asked.
Silver employed selective blindness to the offering of belated cash, putting his hands in his pockets and taking a military stance as he gazed out in the distance at the explosion of storefronts. Willingly, he followed her in, taking in the smell without associating it with anything at all, but he understood her expression and the bittersweet memories that it entailed. He could easily imagine a small Wren and her mother at the threshold of the antique mall, and he understood more of what made her the delicate wisp he now expected when he saw her. His own mother had been the opposite of a shopper, looking only for practical bargains and lecturing about reckless consumerism. Places like this made him think of her, and Silver’s mother made him think of patchouli and cinnamon.
Distractedly, he said, “I’ve got a couch, a living room table, a TV stand, a TV, two chairs and a bed.” After a second, almost unwillingly, he took his sunglasses off so he could squint over the heads of the crowd. The skin around his eyes was pressed and pale, and his eyes more delicate as they scanned from side to side.
She wasn't surprised at his refusal to take the money, but that didn't keep her from huffing quietly in protest, even as she looked over the large, crowded antique mall. She listened to him rattle off what he had, and she made note of what he needed. After a second, she reached over and tugged on his sleeve, pulling him toward one of the vendors in the front-right of the mall.
The vendor in question had antiques from Asia, including clay work and pottery, and Wren walked over to a clay teapot, her fingers gliding over it as she looked up at a large, masculine print, one that claimed to be nearly as old as the painting it originated from. The gold and greens suited Silver, with his quiet ways, and she thought the waves were fitting too. She didn't turn to look at him as she asked the woman to deliver it. It was a housewarming gift, and she had no intention of letting him pay for it either. She motioned to a set of dark wood nesting boxes too, engraved with handworked bamboo leaves, and she slipped the woman her card before Silver could intervene, which she suspected he would, if given the chance. "It's a gift," she said over her shoulder, smiling when the woman nodded her approval. "The print should go over the bed," she told him, because the three panels were certainly wide enough, and it would make his bedroom look less barren.
Silver was concentrating on the print, comparing it to the place he went in his mind to try to push away the negative thoughts he was always fighting off. It was similar, but not exact. The place in Silver’s mind was under that surface, at least a fathom down, and if he saw the glimmers of gold that this one showed on the crests of the waves, it was in glinting shafts, from deep down below the green cool as the water weighed him down. He didn’t hear what she said to the woman who was working there, which was extremely unlike him, and he looked up quickly when they moved from choosing boxes to standing at the counter. Silver avoided looking at the print again, but his smile was deep and very wide when she ordered its placement. “If you say so.Thank you.” He gave the nesting boxes a sideways glance as she was handed a receipt. “What are the boxes for?”
"We need the boxes for your coffee table," she explained, thanking the woman and then nodding toward another vendor across the way. "Which we're going to get from him," she said of a rough looking man in his fifties. The vendor was sitting in the middle of a dozen or so wooden tables from various modern decades, all of which were carved in one way or another. Wren walked between them, gracefully careful not to bump them, even in the tight quarters. Finally, she turned and looked at Silver for a minute, before motioning to one far in the corner. "That one, please," she told the vendor, and she listened as he informed her what kind of wood the table was and explained that it was roughly forty years old.
Silver wondered what she was looking for during the long regard before she chose the table, and she did it with a certainty that made the inner corners of his eyebrows quirk up with mixed amusement and curiosity. He didn’t move with her grace nor did he have as much respect for furniture--old or new--as she was showing, so he stood at one edge of the cluster of tables while she picked the one that she liked. The table did not win the same concentration that the painting had collected, and while he liked the lines on it, he had no particular affection for its strange curls. The painting (or print, whatever the difference was), was an aberration, and now he wondered if this fuss was going to get him in trouble. It was harder to leave a place when you had installed it with things that mattered, which things that you invested with your personality. He liked the van better. Silver eyed the table, imagining with some amusement an attempt to actually force it into said van, and then looked at her. “Why that one?” The vendor looked slightly put out because Silver interrupted him mid-sentence.
Wren watched him look at the table, and she tried to pinpoint the reason for the amusement on his features. She couldn't figure it out but, she decided, that whatever it was, it was good. He didn't smile enough. "Because you don't need any more sharp angles in your life," she said, giving him a look that said she paid attention too, sometimes. "And the circle is messy and simple all at the same time, and won't fit easily into your living room, or even in a van. I think you need more circles," she added, giving the address to the vendor for delivery, and then talking the price down a little based on some imperfections in the wood. She turned to him once that was done, and she nodded at him, indicating that he should pay for the table.
Silver did what was expected of him, wallet and all. "Circles," Silver mused. He'd done what he could to twist his old life and secrets, tangling them into confused lines so that no one could unravel them, but he never thought of himself as sharp angles. He had them; he just did his best to make sure that that no one got cut. When the man moved away to concentrate on the transaction, Silver turned to tilt his head with curiosity. "Do you know about the van?" he asked, quite earnestly. He wasn't threatened, because the smile was still there.
"The van?" she asked, obviously knowing nothing about it. It was just a coincidence, nothing more, but now she looked curious, and her grey eyes lit up with that curiosity. "Are you keeping secrets, Silver?" she asked with a smile, and she was quiet as the vendor returned to finish the transaction. She pulled on Silver's sleeve a second later, tugging him further into the crowded chaos of the antique center. She stopped in front of a few French dressers in pale blue, and some Americana in faded green, but she chose an oriental sideboard to serve as a dresser in his bedroom, one that shared some colors with the painting she'd selected earlier. She ran her fingers over it, and she turned to look at him. "Do you ever worry he'll get you killed?" she asked out of the blue.
He took her word about the van, but chewed on the idea that she would know about it. It surprised him that he was not troubled by it, not even in the way he was troubled by the permanence of the heavy furniture. She interrupted the rumination with the pull on his sleeve, and he followed along closer, taking her hand to prevent the crowd from pulling them apart. His palm was surprisingly warm, but dry and without the need to clutch or cling. When they came to a stop in front of the dresser, he let her go, hiding his hand in his back pocket immediately. The dresser looked like he’d need to pay to have someone to move it, and this entire trip was taking on an edge of the bizarre. As soon as she spoke he looked right at her with full knowledge of her intended topic. “Worry? No. But he might, yes. Why do you ask?”
She was surprised when he took her hand, but she let him hold on without any attempt to pull free, and when he let go she gave him a smile. The dresser was the last piece she felt he absolutely needed, and she liked that it had personality. She imagined his apartment as Ikea bland, with very little flavor and even less color, and that didn't sound very much like a home to her. She was having that problem with Luke's apartment, making it feel like home, but a house would fix that eventually, she knew. The vendor was willing to deliver the dresser, and he interrupted to give a price for the move based on how many stairs he would need to climb. She waited for him to go off and make his calculations before continuing, completely unaware that the permanence of the items was a problem in any way. "Selina," she said simply, because Selina almost had gotten her killed, hadn't she? "She kept me away for days this time. Luke had to lie to Gus, and I just don't know how to make her understand that I can't disappear anymore. With Jack gone and Luke planning on going to the police academy, I need to be home."
Silver’s eyebrows did a quick bounce when she said “police academy,” because he hadn’t felt the need to be in reveal nothing spy mode until Luke’s name came up. It made him think of Max, of beer and paint, but he didn’t actually say anything about it. Silver approved of law enforcement as a career; it required dedication in one fashion or another. That was one of the few occupations that could cause him unnecessary difficulty if Luke decided to act on his obvious dislike, however. Silver forgot about the heat in the center of his palm leftover from the walk from table to dresser and used that hand to scratch his chin thoughtfully. “Selina.” He frowned. “She understands how important Gus is?” he asked.
Wren noticed his reaction, and she cocked her head curiously, wondering what had caused it. She shook her head when he asked about Selina, because that could wait a minute. "No, what is it? What's wrong?" she asked perceptively. She didn't think she'd said anything particularly troubling, at least not other than the thing with Selina, which he already knew about. She had no idea that Silver knew Max, no reason to think she did, since Luke hadn't mentioned it at all. "Selina can wait a minute." The vendor appeared a second later, and Wren only half paid attention to him as she agreed to the shipping price, if he subtracted a percentage from the total. Once he was gone, she turned her grey gaze back onto Silver, questioning.
Silver was willing to temporarily set the problem of Selina aside, but he didn’t need Tony’s attention and not-so-subtle nudging to make sure that it wouldn’t stay on the backburner forever. He waited to speak until the transaction with his unmarked (but pre-paid, inscribed with his real name) credit card completed. These days, people remarked upon it when you paid with something in all cash, and he didn’t much care for the trail it left one way or another. Buying things was a lot more difficult than it had to be, Silver felt, and modern shopping constantly reminded him of it. Once the man was gone, leaving behind a fold of paper with SOLD atop the dresser, Silver asked, “Luke wants to be a cop?” It wasn’t what was wrong, but he was getting there, clearly. “His family will like that.” It was like dropping a pebble in water and watching the ripples. Silver waited.
She nodded. "He's applying for the academy," she said, though she didn't know what was required beyond that, if it was a given he would get in, how long classes would take, anything like that. "He said he's done his research and talked to people, that he wants to make a difference. I'm scared, but I think he'll be a really good cop." She shrugged a little after, and her voice went a little guilty, "and I really, really hate cops, so he would be the first good one I know." She was about to ask him why that bothered him, but the mention of Luke's family made Wren's attention sharpen, her head tip a little more to the side, like a curious bird putting together the world outside her cage. "Luke doesn't talk to his family," she said. She knew Max was in town, but if anything had happened there Luke would have told her, right?
Silver nodded. He was unsurprised at Wren’s dislike of anything representing authority, as no doubt the government and its rules didn’t take kindly to her situation, whether now or in her past. Silver didn’t need a timeline to know that. He could almost sketch one out with the information he had anyway, but he didn’t need it. The nod seemed to also encompass Wren’s topic of Luke’s family, which Silver was visibly more interested in than the furniture choices. “I know. But they would, anyway. I met someone who says she knows you two. Max?” He watched her face, but not intently. The spy was flickering to life like a flame and he was doing little things like redirecting his attention to the SOLD sign behind him and planting seeds he was willing to cultivate minutes, even hours later into the conversation.
Wren watched Silver lead up to the admission that he'd met Max with her breath held, expecting him to mention Thomas instead. She wasn't sure why Thomas was the larger concern, but he was with Luke. Luke still worshipped the man, even as much as he felt betrayed and hurt by him, and it was always a touchy subject. Still, Max wasn't much better, and Wren took a moment to turn toward the door, inclining her head so that Silver would follow, the brief distraction giving her time to collect her thoughts. "How do you know Max?" she asked, knowing Silver would be following and close enough to hear, even in the crowd. She stopped once she reached the doors to the outside world, and she waited for them to part before turning to look at Silver. "She doesn't like me very much, but she and Luke were close," she finally conceded, wondering if Max had anything to do with this decision of Luke's be be a cop. "Jack's living with her now. The Jack that used to take care of Gus. He was injected with something through the door," she added.
Only an amateur would be distracted by so small a thing as movement, and Silver was no amateur. He let her simmer in the conversation, knowing by that look on her face the subject wouldn’t drop, and also willing to wait for the development that would soon come. Espionage was the art of gathering information with patience even when there was no time for patience. It was knowing when to press and it was knowing when to let go. Spies had to accept a surprising amount of ignorance in their day to day. Silver did not miss it.
Of Max, he said, “I just met her. She is one of us on the forums.” He used the word that most made sense to him, because he used Tony’s phone to access the lists. To illustrate he tapped the air over his palm, as if he was holding the device, though he was not. Silver glanced back from the doors as if to say, are we done? but he also did not complain. At the mention of injections, he gave her a sharp look that was all Tony. “Really,” he said.
Wren's eyes narrowed the tiniest bit, not sure she believed that knowing Max through the journals was all there was to it. "What did she say about me?" she asked, a hint of oft-slumbering pride showing itself. For a moment, she was more like the woman Silver had known before the past came raining down on Las Vegas, a little cold, a little dislike, and quite a bit of distance in the question. That really was so not him that it brought her right back, though, back to who she really was when she wasn't guarding herself. "Selina left a note about getting him some drugs to work with - Tony. She didn't tell you- him?" she asked, wondering why Selina only communicated half of the things she needed to communicate. "They think it's time delayed, whatever Jason - that's his name through the door - was injected with. So Jack's staying with Max, in case he goes crazy. It wasn't safe to let him be around Gus."
Judging from his expression, Silver obviously agreed. His eyes became faintly distant as he consulted with Tony about the situation, and for once he was able to follow Tony’s general response despite the technical medical information. Silver slid on his sunglasses again, shielding a squint and his discomfort with the situation. “Tony has been in touch with... the man with the cave,” Silver said, frowning faintly because using the name Batman seemed so completely ridiculous that it didn’t belong on a warm Vegas sidewalk. When they were clear of the doors he moved closer to her, so close that when he inhaled his chest touched her arm. He was watching the crowd and disliked something he saw in it. “Max said what you said; she said she was close to the family, with Luke’s father, I understand, and that you and she did not get along.” Silver left out the debate about Wren’s occupation. “Max also said she was bringing her child here. That’s true? She has a kid?” Now Silver glanced back down into Wren’s face.
Wren smiled when Silver didn't use Bruce's alias; she seldom used it either. "I tend to just call him Bruce," she offered. "Jack hasn't notice any side effects yet, so maybe it's nothing," she said hopefully a hand sliding to the scar along her side without her even thinking about it. She looked up into the Vegas sun as he inhaled deeply, and then she turned to look at his face curiously. "Why would she lie about that?" she asked, wondering why Silver would think someone would lie about that. What was there to gain? "You said you met her on the journals?" she verified, before nodding. "I didn't know Amanda was coming here, but Luke doesn't talk to me about Max. She's-" She paused, trying to get the age right. "She has to be about two years older than Gus? So six or so? All I remember about when she was little was that Thomas and Max fought all the time, and I haven't seen any of them since New York. Why?" Because Silver was the kind of man that didn't talk unless he thought whatever he was discussing was important, which meant it wasn't just a random question.
Silver hesitated before replying. Wren had Gus, after all, and Silver wouldn’t approve of Wren absconding with the child. Yet somehow he disapproved of Max bringing hers here. Max hadn’t mentioned fighting all the time, and Silver naturally wondered how physical said fighting was. “I’m not sure. It is just strange to me, the whole situation here with the Doors, and the girl’s father on the East Coast...” Silver shook his head. He hadn’t exactly come from a nuclear family himself, but even he had no idea how such an arrangement worked. He wasn’t going to mention additional danger from Max’s occupation. “Why bring her here?” he asked, bluntly.
Wren stared a moment longer, trying to figure this all out, as if looking at Silver would long enough would fill in the gaps for her. But it didn't, of course. She took Silver's sleeve, and she tugged him toward the edge of the sidewalk, where she could keep an eye out for the cabs that passed by with regularity. "Is she coming to live with her? I don't think Amanda ever lived with Max. She was always at Luke's- With Thomas, I mean," she said, thinking back to Seattle and trying to remember if she had missed something there. "Well, I think they lived together in New York, but Luke wasn't living there then, so I can't be sure. I can ask Luke why she's bringing her. I think they talk a lot, and he just doesn't tell me."
The movement in the crowd that Silver had not liked turned into nothing, one half of a family searching for the other, but he didn’t space himself out from her again. He shadowed her along the heated cement, facing the flow of traffic. He wasn’t sure what it was about this road that made him more uncomfortable now than it had been when they’d walked in. Perhaps it was the conversation. “Yes. Max invited me over for a drink to help with the room,” Silver said, not one for hiding something for the sake of it--whenever he caught himself doing it, anyway. “There’s no need to bother Luke about it. I was just curious because of the coincidence of connection.” As if there was any such thing as coincidence.
Wren was, by this point, looking completely distrusting of the entire conversation. "Max invited you over? Out of the blue like that? Was it before Jack moved in?" she asked. Silver's words - coincidence of the connection - made something click, and she gave him a grey-eyed look that was maybe a little too observant. "Is she back in the military?" she asked. It was off-base, but close, and she knew Silver did something undercover, or had done something undercover, before he ran away from all that. "Are you back in?" Another assumption, not exactly right, but close.
Silver’s mouth settled into a soft line, dragged down by old weights. The sunglasses hid almost everything else, but seeing as how he was standing close enough to take a bullet for her, Wren was undoubtedly quick enough to draw conclusions. “The less you know the better, but I can tell you no, I’m not ‘back in’ anything. I’m working on cars in my garage.” His tone was stubborn, and in a different man it would have been accompanied by more than a sharp exhale of breath and a stretch of his arms to either side, working off invisible bonds.
Wren noticed the line of his mouth, and she noticed how close he'd been standing since they'd stepped outside. She believed when he said he wasn't back in, and she took that the less you know the better as an assertion that, yes, all of this had to do with whatever Max was doing here. Her eyes narrowed the tiniest bit as she thought back to his comment about coincidences. "You think she reached out to you because Luke and I know you?" she asked, not quite getting right, but realizing that's why he would think Max was lying about Amanda. "Are you safe here?" she asked, suddenly worried. It seemed no one was ever safe lately.
Silver worked his lips together, thinking about what to say. His curled fingers split the air in a wide stretch, starting with his left and working up to his elbow, and then mirroring his right. “No,” he said, slowly. “I think Luke and you know me, so she’s here.” The amber sheets of glass slid down, somehow sharp in their uncertainty, to reflect her face and not Silver at all. A cab slid by, and he didn’t even look up. “...But I would prefer it if you didn’t mention it to Luke.” Silver didn’t like presenting it as a problem, but it was, especially with the oaths Luke would soon be asked to take.
"If Max is using us to get to you, it's a problem, Silver," Wren replied with that determination that showed itself so very little in her. "It's not right," she added, as if that was all the required backing. It wasn't that she had any illusions about Silver's past, or the fact that he'd done things that would probably have earned him a needle if they weren't in service of the government, but that didn't mean she liked it. And she was just a little tired of being pushed around and taking it lately. Between Selina, and now Crane possessing his Las Vegas person, Jack being a ticking timebomb, and Max using all of them to- to what? "If it's to get you back, then how far will they go?" she asked, intelligence lighting her grey eyes, as if she'd just realized what the real concern was.
Silver shook his head, it was a movement but very slight. “We shouldn’t talk about this out here,” he said. Silver might not have been a brilliant international asset, but he could sure as hell read lips, and he wasn’t the only one. It would have been difficult to get a clear view from the way he was standing, though, and so he continued. “She’s not; she knows it won’t work. I don’t know the nature of her... goals,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “And I’ve only met her once, but I don’t think she was sent here to go farther than she already has.” Silver frowned when he said the words ‘sent here.’ He was letting Wren in farther than she should go. “Unless something has changed I don’t know about, there’s not a way they can force me to do anything.” The amber glass flashed again as he turned to take in the road. “Let’s walk.” And he took her arm gently, setting off to do just that.
Wren didn't know enough about what Max had done to be able to help provide any information. It just hadn't ever seemed important to the girl she'd been. "But you think there will be more?" she asked, reading it in his expression and the sound of his voice. Okay, so if Max was here to find things out, then maybe someone else would come after? "Max wouldn't sell Luke out like that," she began, but she stopped once she realized that Max hadn't done anything to help Luke once things went wrong with Thomas. Who knew what she might do? She let him lead her when he took her arm, lost in thought about what this could become, if it was really what Silver believed it to be. "I thought they forced people to do things all the time," she said of the government. Her faith and trust in anything with a badge or a gun was very, very minimal.
Silver smiled. It wasn’t one of his nicer ones at all: it was like motor oil, black and sleek and clever. It was probably the most unattractive expression he could possibly have. “They do. But not this person, as much as they would like to. There will always be more; there has always been someone, too. That is the way of things in this business.” It was clear from the rapidity of his speech that he had just thrown caution to the wind. Might as well talk about it, for there was little to lose now. Wren had just become a pawn in the game, and Silver could imagine the photos of the two of them now, his stride long and his hand on her elbow. He sighed. “I don’t think Max is a threat to me,” he repeated. “But it’s a possibility I can’t ignore. And Luke isn’t my biggest fan.”
She didn't like the smile. It wasn't that she was scared of Silver; she wasn't. But she still didn't like it. "You mean you can't quit? Not ever?" she asked, because she knew he was out of the business, but it sounded like that came at the price of always being chased. "Can they do that?" she asked, before shaking her head immediately after. "Of course they can. They don't have to follow the same rules as everyone else," she said, the same distrust she had for law enforcement coming through. She realized, a second later, that he'd just said so much more about it than he ever had before, and her steps slowed. "If you're telling me about this, then you think it's a threat, Silver." She wasn't sure if she agreed with him about Max, but he was right about Luke - and not right. "He wouldn't sell you out to Max," she said with complete trust in Luke's ability to see what Max was after, if she was after anything at all.
Silver was silent through her first three questions; he let her talk herself into conclusions, and though they were a bit black and white, they were still the correct ones. Espionage was not about rules. It was about not getting caught breaking them. He did not slow where she did, but he shortened his strides so that he did not leave her behind. “There is a threat,” he agreed, “but there always has been. And it is not to you or Gus, so you need not worry. Max is a wild card there; were it to come down to it, I think she would side with Luke, and therefore you. A valuable ally.” Yet he raised a brow when she reassured him about Luke selling him out. Quite frankly, Silver thought that was bullshit. Luke would sell him out if he thought it was the right thing to do, or even if it strongly benefited Max and wouldn’t lose Wren or endanger Gus.
"I worry lately about a lot of things," she admitted, but it was clear she wasn't sure yet how high this was on the priority list. "I'm pretty sure Jack is going to go crazy when we're least expecting it, and Alexander's door person is controlling his person in Vegas and trying to get into the apartment, and I don't like the idea of Max spying on any of us on top of it," she admitted, a short exhale punctuating her displeasure. She stopped, the area of the street they were on quieter and more concealed now. "Are you frightened?" Because if Silver was frightened, then this would jump right up to the top of the worry list.
This, at least, Silver could answer with truth. “No. I haven’t been frightened since the hospital. Listen, Wren, I didn’t tell you this to worry you. I just didn’t want you to think I was lying about Max.” He touched his hairline, a brief movement, and did a long exhale that grounded his heels into the cement and forced his shoulders to relax. “And I don’t think she’s spying on you, for what it’s worth. It is like...” He searched for a metaphor. “Meeting an Olympic runner and expecting her to join a step class.” A flickering flame of a smile, slight but many times more reassuring than the oil slick one.
"The hospital?" she asked, completely ignoring everything else in favor of that tiny admission.
Silver blinked. Shit. “I went after Tony was hurt. A long time ago.” Ages. “I’m fine.”
"Silver." She was smaller than him, younger than him, and yet she managed to look up at him without any bit of cowing whatsoever.
“I am!” he said, defensively. “I was just... making sure. Tony didn’t take care of it. I’m not sure if he knows how.” Silver lifted two fingers and touched the center of his sternum, as if to illustrate why. In his mind, Tony was saying, Shit, Silver, you don’t think she hates me enough? Just had to nail in the coffin?
She followed his fingers with a grey gaze and a frown. "They're going to get us all killed one day, and they'll just come back in other people," she said with anger that didn't belong entirely to Tony, though a large percentage of it did. She sighed then, and she reached up and tugged his sunglasses off without warning. "Talk to him about it. Promise? So it doesn't happen again."
Silver reflexively brought a hand up to catch the glasses or perhaps keep them in place, but in the end did neither, his fingers floating in the air inside her arm. He let her take the glasses, his eyes behind naked and soft around the edges, gentle wrinkles in keen white and the padding of his quiet personality in his gaze. “Talk to him about what, Wren?”
"About the fact that you don't have a suit of tin out here, or whatever Selina calls it, and that your bodies aren't the same. Things he can tolerate can kill you once you cross back over," she said, her voice firm, as if he would listen just because she told him that he had to do something. She handed the glasses back a second later. She might contact Tony herself, she decided, just to be safe, and she would find out about Max, too, but she didn't think he would like hearing that, so she kept it to herself. "Promise, and then I'll let you go wait for your round table with no corners."
Silver looked bemused. “I can handle as much as Tony can. More, in a lot of ways.” He wasn’t defending Tony, it was just true. He took the glasses back in the palm of his hand, and in the flat of his life line they seemed more delicate than they did on his face. He took their removal as a sign she preferred them off, so he left them be and just blinked an exceptional amount in the next two minutes.
"You didn't promise," she said, chastising. She didn't mind the blinking or the squinting. She did it a lot herself these days, with no more designer sunglasses to hide behind. She tugged on his sleeve again, back toward the road and the taxis, and she sighed as she moved. "I'm starting a safehouse," she said, because if she didn't change the subject from all the ways they were going to die she was going to start screaming.
He moved as she did. He didn’t see how talking to Tony was going to change the least little thing. Maybe it was a female thing? He shied away as soon as he thought it. His mother would have stripped his hide. “A what?” he asked, blankly, obviously not properly listening.
"A safehouse for working girls who are trying to get off the street and away from their pimps," she explained, waving a hand for the taxi that was nearing them. She knew he hadn't been listening, and she wondered about it, but she forced herself to move forward, to change the subject. She would talk to Tony, and she would talk to Luke, and then she'd feel better about all the new dangers that kept cropping up when she wasn't looking. She pulled the door open for him.
Silver heard it this time and nodded appreciatively. “That’s good, something productive and giving at the same time. I’ve never been very giving.” He was still distracted. He got a very good look at the taxi driver and he spotted the man that was supposedly half of a family coming back out of the antique mall alone at just the right time. He wondered who had taken over training. They weren’t bad. Not good. But not bad, either. Silver shook his head and waited for Wren to slide in first.
She followed his gaze, but she noticed none of the nuances he did. Faces were just faces to her, nothing to notice unless the features were familiar or from a nightmare, and she climbed into the taxi a moment later. She wanted to ask him what he'd noticed, and she looked at him for a second before sliding across, considering it, but she knew he was distracted by whatever it was, and that meant whatever it was wasn't good. Instead, she just gave the driver her address, so that he could drop her off at Willows first.
Silver watched his watchers as the taxi pulled away. They’d watch this one; they were good enough to not put him in a rigged taxi, but not so good that he didn’t notice someone on his tail. What the hell did they think he was doing? Passing secret messages in antiques? He’d have to look over the furniture for bugs; he hoped they weren’t so supremely idiotic as to try something like that. Silver didn’t notice as he slid over far enough to be a bare inch from Wren’s elbow, and he was quiet on the way back to his apartment, caught up in his thoughts as he tried to decide whether informing her was a mistake or not.