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silver mckellar and tony stark are (silverandsteel) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-03-30 23:22:00

Who: Silver and Wren
What: Checking on the kid. Only like a spy.
Where: Vegas
When: Recently.
Warnings/Rating: Not a one.

Wren didn’t panic on Monday. She arrived at the park at lunchtime, as she always did, and when she didn’t see Iris and Gus, she sat down demurely on the park bench and waited, hands folded in her lap and only the wiggling of the loose pump on her foot an indication of her nervousness.

Wren didn’t panic on Tuesday. She arrived earlier, Finch in tow, and she spent the lunch hour scratching the dog’s head as she waited. Surely they would show up soon, she thought. Surely everything was okay. She didn’t make the connection, then, between Iris and the woman Damian had been talking about, though she should have done, but concern was starting to take over, and logical thinking was quickly disappearing.

Wren didn’t panic on Wednesday. Except for the part where she did panic. She arrived at the park that day in a pair of cream slacks and a white camisole that tied behind the neck, and she didn’t bring the dog. She knew, somehow, that Iris wouldn’t be there, but it wasn’t Iris she was worried about. Say something had happened to the woman during the event at the hotel, say she was someone from behind a door, that didn’t explain why Gus wasn’t at the preschool, as he had been every single weekday until Iris’ arrival.

Then Wren remembered the little boy she had heard at the hotel that night, the one calling for his mother. Then she panicked.

She texted Silver, even though she had no idea if the man was in Las Vegas, instead of calling her replacement driver. The regular park. Please. If you’re here. She gave no explanation, because she didn’t think to. If she didn’t hear back, she could call her driver, but she never used one for these lunch trips, not wanting a stranger to start adding things together.

It took Silver about fifteen minutes to respond. His return text only took thirty seconds, with one word: Coming. Full response was Silver, alone, driving a nondescript white Ford sedan with a light jacket and a blankly serious expression. He pulled up to the curb after circling the park once and looking for danger signs while pretending to look for a parking spot in the small crowded lots. Eventually he pulled up to the curb, choosing an open spot that allowed him to maneuver free quickly, and he watched for Wren over the dashboard.

She had walked to the preschool and back, thinking perhaps Gus was simply not being allowed outside, but there was no sign of him, which hadn’t improved her worry. She berated herself for not checking the morning after the incident at the hotel, beating herself up over it as she approached the white sedan that she recognized as Silver’s. He would be able to tell she was worried, even with the cool, pale demeanor and clothing. Her steps were too quick in the designer heels, and she had brown sunglasses hiding her eyes, but her worry was still immediately evident to anyone who knew her. She walked toward the rear, driver’s side door, without any intention of waiting for him to open the door for her.

He hit the lock button and it opened like magic. As soon as she was next to the car Silver’s eyes were on his mirrors, not on her. Behind his dark glasses he watched the faces of the park as one, looking to see if there were patterns in the directions of any watching eyes or passing pedestrians. None. As soon as she was inside, he hit the lock button again, and a sealed silence encompassed them both. It was like being inside a tank without the rumble of an engine or the smell of gasoline. He didn’t pull away just yet.

She didn’t greet him, though she hadn’t seen him since he’d disappeared from Caesar’s. She didn’t pull off the glasses, which allowed her to maintain the facade of calm through the dark panels that covered her eyes. She gave him an address, which she didn’t really stop to think about as carefully as she should have. It was a residential neighborhood, one a little removed from the strip that was known for its upper-class, extremely Christian residents. “Please,” she added a moment later, politely.

His own glasses were darker and thicker than hers, and it was only the feel of his gaze in the mirror that made it clear he was watching her. He didn’t wait for the “please” to pull away, but a tiny twitch of his head in the mirror was his acknowledgment of the addition. The polite British tones of Tony’s computer said, “Message from Agent Coulson,” from Silver’s front pocket. He didn’t make a move to acknowledge it, and he turned them in the right direction with a precision weave through traffic that implied haste. After a moment he said, “Do you expect a threat?”

Did she expect a- “No. I’m just-” she paused, trying to figure out how to put it into words. “I’m worried.” Her voice, which was less than even and nowhere near as cool as it should be spoke to more than just casual concern, despite what she said. “There’s no threat.” Not the kind he meant, anyway. She went quiet, watching the scenery for a moment, and then she sighed. “I’m sorry if I dragged you away from something important,” she added, because Agent Coulson sounded important. She rubbed her temple with her fingers, and she tried to calm her racing pulse. “I should have realized-” Here she trailed off again.

“I have not been dragged,” Silver said, firmly. There might not be a threat, but the sound of her voice made Silver think that there simply wasn’t a threat yet. He noticed that her eyes trailed after the passing buildings, but she didn’t focus. He wove through three more lanes of traffic and neatly pulled to a stop at the light. A cab driver tried to glare at him through the passenger side door, but he stopped when he couldn’t see through the tinted windows.

She looked back at the rearview when he said he hadn’t been dragged. “You know what I meant, Silver,” she said with a soft firmness that remained, despite the way her fingers were clenched in her lap. “Here,” she said unnecessarily of the housing development. She had no idea how they were going to get inside, because she hadn’t been thinking of that. In the end, her best option was money, and she clicked open the clutch that was beside her on the seat and began unfolding hundred dollar bills before he approached the gatehouse. She leaned forward, and she handed them over the seat at him, willing him not to argue with her about this. Not now.

Silver pulled the car up to the gate. He put his eyes over the posted signs, the quality of the gate, thought about telling JARVIS to give him a picture of the layout beyond. He knew the security company, and he could get a pass inside, but it would take time and reveal things he didn’t want to reveal. It would also attract unnecessary attention. They would try her way first. He put a hand back, and his blunt fingers plucked the bills from her.

The man at the gate leaned out as they stopped, and Silver rolled down his window halfway. The window tint and his glasses seemed to meld together, and to the guard, it was as if car and driver were one. “We are visiting a friend, but they might have forgotten to put our name on the list.” Silver put his hand, with the sheaf of bills, on the top of the steering wheel. He peeled one of the hundreds off, clearly displaying the rest. “Maybe you can check.” He peeled another off.

She watched as the bills kept getting peeled off, until the man at the gate suddenly remembered they were on the list and opened the gate that allowed them into the community beyond. It had cost ten of those hundreds, but Wren didn’t care. Instead she pointed at the first intersection, not needing to read the name of the street at all. “That one,” she said. “Halfway down. The large white home that’s set back from the road.” She was sitting forward now, her hands on the back of the passenger’s seat as she looked out the front window. “Don’t park right in front,” she said unnecessarily, because if knocking was an option then she would have simply given her name to the man in the gatehouse.

This was, admittedly, as far as she’d thought. There was a car in the driveway, a cream, Lexus SUV, and she sighed as she tried to figure out what to do next.

Silver didn’t slow. He scoped the house as they moved down the sidestreet, and he cataloged the other houses, judging which seemed to be occupied and which did not. In Las Vegas, everyone kept their houses shut up to keep the cool in most of the time, but fortunately the day was balmy and the majority of homeowners were taking advantage of the rare bearable weather. No immediate threats, like incongruously well-built cars or overoccupied houses, jumped out at him. Once past, he eventually turned right, then right again, taking them back around in a circle and parking in front of a house with a FOR SALE sign several houses down and across the street. He didn’t ask where they were. He waited to see what she was going to do.

She sat back in the cool of the car, and she tugged the sunglasses off as she turned to look at the house in question. Planning had never been her strong point, but there was limited opportunity here. “I can’t knock,” she finally said. “They’ll recognize me.” A second passed, and she pulled out another wad of bills, which she held out in addition to what was already on the dashboard. “The streets all have matching numbers. You can walk up to the door under the pretense of having the wrong one,” she suggested, reaching the money out when she made the suggestion. “Just look,” she said. “That’s all. Please?”

This time, he didn’t take the money. From the angle of his head he was also watching the house. It was not a good house for him. There were many windows on the upper floor looking down on the walk to the entrance, a side door he could see from here, and gates that implied a big backyard and potential threats from all angles. “Tell me precisely what I’m looking for,” he said. It wasn’t a leading question, it was an important one. He needed a clear description and outline of persons, places, and things, because he would need that in order to make a split-decision on whether something was wrong, and he needed to act, or not.

She was quiet for a full minute, almost as if she wasn’t going to respond at all. “There’s a little boy that lives there,” she finally said. “I just want to make sure he’s okay. I heard a child at the event at the hotel, and he hasn’t been- he’s normally at the park at lunchtime. He hasn’t been.” It was more information than she’d ever offered on the subject, and she went immediately quiet afterward. “There’s no threat. The family is- extreme, but they aren’t criminals.” She supposed that, maybe, they were, but not in the way Silver would be concerned over. “The mother doesn’t work. She should be home.”

Silver pondered the house a little while longer without commenting or looking again at Wren’s face in the mirror, and then, deliberately, he stepped out of the car, rising to his full height on the sunny sidewalk and straightening his suit absently. He looked around, as if trying to orient himself, and then began walking in the direction of the house, reaching into his pocket and holding the blue phone in his fingers. Lost, waiting for a call. He wandered toward the house, hesitated, turned up the walk, and then looked again at the number emblazoned there in gold letters. He rang the doorbell, the blue glass flickering in the sunshine as he turned it over and over in his fingers, like jacob’s ladder.

The woman that answered the door was in her later-forties, and she could certainly afford to hire someone to open the door for her. She was garbed in a sensible skirt to the ankles, gray, and a buttoned blouse in white that reached her throat. She did not look kind, with a thin line for a mouth and small, squinty eyes. She wore shoes, even inside the house, and they were sensible gray flats with a hint of thick nude hose beyond the closed toe. Beyond her, the house was a mix of flavorless money and religion. Crosses hung over white arches, and a Bible sat open on a pale wood coffee table. There was a church service playing on the flat screen television that was just visible over her shoulder, and there was no indication that a child lived in the austere space. “Yes?” she asked, obviously unconcerned about answering the door in her quiet, safe neighborhood, giving Silver a sweeping, slightly disapproving look.

Silver was well-dressed, but not too well-dressed. He wore a faintly confused expression, but he didn't overdo it. He looked behind her at the room, pretending to look for something that wasn't there. He assessed the room, but saw nothing that offended his sensibilities. He noted the woman seemed calm and did not shy behind her door. Still, he wanted to elicit a response concerning her child, so, children in general. He gave her a faintly apologetic smile. "...I'm here about the daycare?"

The mention of the daycare made her no more welcoming, no warmer, and there was the sense that she was not generally a warm woman. There was, also, no indication that a child lived in the antiseptic house, which was surely too quiet for small feet of any kind. In fact, if a tiny, hopeful face hadn’t peered around a corner far back in the living room, Silver likely wouldn’t have gotten any confirmation of anything at all. The boy was small, not much older than four, and too young to belong to this woman with the stern features. Brown floppy hair and familiar wide, blue-gray eyes that were almost too big for his tiny face, and he blinked as he looked at the open doorway, clearly hoping to find someone he knew there. “There is no daycare here. You have the wrong house,” the woman said, already moving to close the door.

Silver, immediately more charmed by the boy than the woman, smiled across the pristine carpet and empty house at the small face. He didn’t attempt to say anything, nor did he stop the door. The boy was present and safe, and the information was all that he needed. “Sorry,” he said, to the bare inch that remained between the door and the frame before it firmly shut. He regarded the door a thin second, and then turned around to walk away down the walk the way he had come. He continued to look at the house numbers, but he moved quicker now that he ‘knew’ he had the wrong one. He got back into the car. “Boy, probably around four, brown hair, blue eyes. He looked fine.”

Wren was ready to exit the car by the time he returned, and it was obvious. Her body was turned toward the door, her hand on the handle and she looked up just shy of pushing it open when he approached and got back in the vehicle. Her grip on the door loosened slowly, and she took the care to smooth down the silken cream slacks and check the places where the white shirt was tucked in at the waist, all in an effort to get her emotions back under tight control before she spoke. She managed to hide the exhale of relief, but only just, and she settled back against the seat a moment later. “Thank you,” she managed, refraining from her old habit of chattering away when she was nervous or relieved. She glanced at the house, her expression as she looked out the window something wistful.

“It would be good if you saw him?” Silver asked, wondering what kind of custody was going on, but also not willing to kidnap a child, not even for Wren. He started the car and pulled away from the curb, taking a three point turn rather than going past the house for a third time. They went back toward the gate, and Silver watched the guard as they pulled out and away. Photographing the license plate, inconvenient, but unsuccessful, there was a reflective plastic frame over both. Dangerous, because if police saw it he’d get quite a fine and unfortunate attention, but important on something like this.

She shook her head, her expression back to being entirely placid as she looked at him through the rearview. “No. I just wanted to make sure he was okay. As I said, I heard a child at the hotel, and I thought-” She stopped herself without finishing the thought, because it was obvious, wasn’t it? She’d worried it might be hereditary, whatever had happened to them, and when Gus and Iris hadn’t been at the park... She sighed. “Thank you, Silver. You didn’t have to help me, and I just- No one knows.” She paused. Corrected. “Almost no one,” because Roger knew about Gus, but he’d never asked where the baby had ended up, or even if it had survived. She leaned forward, and she tried to reach the roll of money over the back of the seat again for him to take.

Silver was starting to get the feeling that she would throw money at him every time he found out the smallest personal thing about her, and he suppressed an unnatural annoyance. He took the money, leaning over sideways, and threw the roll in the passenger seat glove box. He slammed it shut, and it was hard to tell whether it was necessary to get it closed or a rare display of temper. He straightened in his seat. “There was a child at the hotel?”

“For driving me,” she said after the slam of the glove box, voice calm, not at all apologetic. “If you’re doing things for me without pay, then you need to tell me so.” She smiled a little, even through the cool facade, which was back in place. She was calm now; she believed he’d seen Gus, and that he would tell her if there was anything wrong, which meant she could breathe easily once more, and she could put up that perfect facade once more. “I heard one, yes, but I didn’t see him.”

He said nothing in reference to the money, only put his hands again on the wheel and thought of white flowers in dark water. The tactic had limited success. “That is troubling.” He was not going back to the park, but moving in a slow drive back toward the hotel. JARVIS interrupted the hum of the motor with subtle announcements of various messages, many of them from Pepper, others notifications in arcane technical language. He didn’t pick up the phone at any point.

She began to tell him he could answer the messages, but she stopped herself with a shake of her head. “I almost told you that you could answer those, and that I wouldn’t mind, but then I realized you would only tell me that you didn’t need my permission,” she said, no ire or sarcasm in it, merely truth and the fact that she was starting to know him well enough to know that. She noticed that he was driving to the hotel, and she didn’t ask him to change course. She could use a rest and a glass of wine after the past hour. “You won’t tell anyone?” she asked unecessarily.

“No.” And then, without pause, as the nondescript car sat in the traffic rather than maneuvering around it, “If I needed to answer, I would. I have discovered in Tony’s world, there is always something that needs to be dealt with.” He shifted position now, his weight onto one hip, the flat of his palm on top of the steering wheel, his gaze through the dark glasses fatigued. He wanted to talk to Wren about the boy, but he had no questions, and he only wanted her to confide in him. It was a selfish impulse, and he did not act on it. He didn’t think she would, at any rate.

“I think Gotham is that way too. I’m just lucky that I can’t hear what Selina wants, so I’m pretty oblivious to everything but that compulsion to go through the door. Now she just leaves a schedule on the phone calendar for me,” she said with a small shake of her head. She watched his movements, and then she reached forward and touched his shoulder thankfully. He could have pressed, she knew, but he didn’t, and she trusted him when he said he wouldn’t tell anyone, even without the added incentive of payment. “It sounds like your door has a lot of problems though. I’m surprised you’re here. Grateful, but surprised.”

“I imagine,” Silver said, “that most of the problems in Gotham are caused by Selina, so she would have a schedule.” The touch surprised him, and he turned his head slightly and raised his right hand to brush her fingers as they slid off the rough suitcoat. He didn’t say anything to accompany the action, but he did it anyway, and he waited to see what she would do with it. Tony was making caustic comments in the back of his head.

“I’m told that Gotham has bigger problems than Selina,” she said, her expression going slightly dark as she thought of Alex, and of what she knew about his Gotham counterpart. “I was talking to someone there, one of the Robins, and he seemed to indicate it would be a fairly dangerous place to be, and that’s without the added complication of Selina working for crime bosses.” She squeezed the tips of his fingers for a second, warmth and all the callouses from knives and long since gone, replaced by thickening where a crop was accustomed to resting between her fingers. “Thank you,” she repeated, a counter to the money that had caused him to slam the glove compartment shut, and then she let go and sat back once more.

Silver didn’t have much to say about Gotham. But he let some of the hardness around his mouth ease, and he let his hand return to the wheel as she slid back in her seat. “You’re welcome.” The car came to a stop in front of the hotel, Silver maneuvering around several cabs and ignoring the hopeful leans of the coated men on the curb that worked for the hotel. He stopped the car out of their reach, got out without a trace of difficulty or harshness of breath, and opened her door.

By the time he opened the door any lingering softness was gone from her expression, and the act she put on for the world was firmly in place, all creams and white and ice pale. She gave him a small smile, one that anyone close-by would likely notice as being too warm for a driver, and then she turned and disappeared into the hotel lobby, stopping for the concierge and not turning back when she continued on with the man chattering at her side.