silver mckellar and tony stark are (silverandsteel) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-03-04 00:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | catwoman, iron man |
Who: Wren of the Many names ("Minette") and Silver
What: In which Silver is frowny-face for no good reason.
Where: Caesar's and Vegas roads.
When: Day after this.
Warnings/Rating: None, nice and safe.
Silver’s shiny black car was even shinier than usual. The wax had been buffed off seconds ago, and any speck of dust practically glowed on the surface of the car as it waited outside the hotel under one of the massive white horses rearing toward the clear Las Vegas sky. It was noon but they were having a pleasant cool spell, so Silver wasn’t warm in his white button-down shirt. His suit jacket was in the passenger seat, and the sunglasses he was wearing where several shades darker than usual, lacking the amber glow his gaze usually had. He looked like a blank bodyguard, unsmiling, serious, focused.
Wren had woken up an hour before noon. The night before had been a long one, and she was sluggish and less put together than normal that morning. Sleep had been evading her since the run-in with Luke about the necklace, and she had forgone her regular tea for coffee. The stainless steel tumbler was still in her hand when she left the suite dressed in a gray tunic and black leggings, long blonde hair loose around her shoulders. Even the simple clothing was exquisitely cut, designer, and she tugged a pair of sunglasses out of her leather bag as she stepped into the Vegas sun and moved toward the car that was waiting for her. “Silver,” she said, stopping just shy of the door and waiting for him to open it for her.
“We should talk,” Silver said. His voice was low so that those beyond did not hear what he was saying. His lips didn’t even seem to move, but he knew better than to try to shield the conversation from the security; it was a casino and they had every inch and every angle covered. The conversation was not so private that he thought they would notice. He stepped back from his usual position and opened the front passenger side door for her. The dark lenses waited to see if she would take this new route.
Wren couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in the front seat of a car, but she only hesitated for a moment before making her decision. She pushed the sunglasses up on her head, looking every bit the sleepy socialite with her slightly puffy eyes and pale gray squint. She handed him her bag, which was large and heavy, and the tumbler. Then she slid into the front seat with a, “thank you, Silver.” She was counting on the handing over the items to maintain the distinction between driver and friend, at least with the potential clients milling around, and she stopped herself from reaching for the doorknob to shut the door herself. Her motivation in acquiescing was, in truth, simple; she was worried he’d found something out, something he hadn’t told her over the phone, and she wasn’t willing to let her job stand in the way of learning whatever he had to say.
Silver took the bag and coffee. At twelve noon, there weren’t many people about, and none of them were the kind to be able to afford Wren’s services. Only tourists and employees were up and around catching taxis at the height of day, the heirs sleeping in, the businessmen already in lunch meetings. He put the bag in the back, and then he took the coffee around to the front. He settled into the driver’s seat, and then he handed over the coffee, silently. The car pulled out and away. The dark glasses were blank.
She took the coffee from him, but she didn’t take a sip, and she sat in silence for a few seconds. “Robert Cromeans,” she said, naming one of the most elite spas in Las Vegas. “Thank you.” She figured he would say whatever he had to say once they were on their way, and the fingers that held the tumbler in her lap went pale from the pressure of fingertips against metal. It was cool in the car, comfortable, and she didn’t tug the glasses down like she normally would have. She didn’t want to hide behind a wall of gray for this conversation, if it was about what she thought it would be about.
He set the course without thinking; the car did not have a GPS in it. Silver was unusually grim; he usually at least asked her how she was, or made some pleasant comment about the weather. He didn’t do any of those things. “I think you should tell me who this person is.” The sunshine moved over his glasses and lit up his eyes. He looked worried.
“You know who he is,” she said carefully, calmly, years of schooling her emotions in the blankness of the words. “You looked him up. What is it that you’re asking me?” she pressed, wanting clarification, no longer the little girl that would say everything that came to mind without thought for the consequences. She’d slipped up more times than she could count since she’d run into Luke again, but that was different. She waited.
“Don’t play stupid with me. You’re smarter than that. I don’t know who he is, I know his name and his history on paper. Why am I looking this person up?” Silver had dug up some things he hadn’t wanted to find, and he had stopped after a certain point, but that was at the point where he hit a wall and started getting uncomfortable phone calls.
“I told you,” she said calmly, though something went sharp in her eyes at his tone, “I’m worried about him. He’s someone I care about. What aren’t you telling me?” she reached back for her bag, because if it was money he wanted, she had more than enough. Silver never, ever snapped, and she made a living watching body language and listening to voices; something was wrong. She tugged at the zipper, and she pulled out her checkbook and took her time uncapping the gold pen, emphasizing her calm.
“I don’t think this person is someone you need to worry about. He’s settled here. He’s got a roof and a job and he’s taking care of himself. He’s very good at the job, too, reports say. This is someone you dated? In New York?” Silver had traced Luke Henry back a very good way. New York was where he had hit a wall, though his timeline had holes all over the place. He didn’t like how difficult it was to track this person, though. So many motels and cash, so little sign, that was not the patterns of a typical citizen.
Silver didn’t seem to know about Seattle, and she wondered if he’d traced her back to New York too, in order to make that connection as solidly as he had. “He has holes in his shoes, and he’s too smart for his job. I wanted to make sure he had a roof, running water, and enough to live on. That’s all.” She gave him a look that was calm knowledge, understanding and enough presence to play this game. “If something’s worrying you, you can just tell me,” she said, letting him know she wasn’t going to fill in blanks for him, not without knowing what the blanks were.
“Why didn’t you just ask him these things?” She had hired him, and Silver felt entitled to pry. There was something he really didn’t like about this whole situation, and this was why he didn’t go into PI work. There was always something dark beneath the surface. Always.
“He doesn’t want my help or my pity. He wouldn’t tell me himself,” she said candidly. She had learned, over the years, to only lie when it was absolutely necessary. The more truth you gave someone, the more likely they were to believe everything was true. In this case, this was true. Luke didn’t want her help, and he didn’t want her money. Roger was a different story, but Silver hadn’t managed to find a brother, which wasn’t surprising, since Wren hadn’t known about him until recently herself.
Silver had come away from many years of work in intelligence bearing certain fundamental truths. Everyone had secrets. All information had value. People did irrational things with the things they learned about other people, especially people they had feelings for. There was no great trauma that had forced Silver from his last job, though there had been plenty of trauma to go around without such dramatic effects. Usually when people get emotional about other people. He pushed at one corner of the black sunglasses and watched the haze of the midday over the road. “Maybe you should respect his wishes.”
The girl she had been would have cowed at the criticism, and she would have allowed all the prodding and prying without defense. But she wasn’t that girl anymore, hadn’t been that girl in a very long time. “If the job bothered you, you shouldn’t have taken it, Silver.” She pulled the agreed upon fee from her bag, not bothering with a check as intended. She folded the bills in half, and she set the money on the car’s dashboard. “Sometimes helping people when they need it is more important than their pride,” she added, a touch of fierceness mingling with the calm waters of her voice. If Roger hadn’t ignored her protests of charity as a teenager, she would likely be dead. If Luke hadn’t done the same in Seattle, she would still be in a jail cell. “Thank you. I think I’ll stop at the shops just up ahead,” she added. “I’ll find my way from there.” The regal bearing was back in her voice, and her shoulders went a little straighter with the tone.
Silver put a broad hand out and covered the money. Leaving it out in plain sight was foolish, and he sighed at the youth in her response. He made a fist of it and put it in the armrest between them before putting his hand back on the steering wheel. “That’s probably why I took the job,” he agreed, not looking at her as he maneuvered through the traffic. His chin was tipped slightly to one side and his gaze was hooded (visible only through the small space at the profile of the glasses), the intensity gone and the rumination back. He flattened his palm against the wheel and turned it, easing the car to the curb at the shops, not arguing with her about where she wanted to go. Silver always respected the wishes of the people he was driving. He would not have liked being forced to go somewhere he had no desire to be.
She didn’t open the door, not immediately. Instead, she sat in quiet for a second and then turned her attention back to him. “Then why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you?” she asked. She didn’t make the mistake of thinking Silver was unintelligent because he drove a car, because she knew better than to think that mattered in any significant way. “Instead of lecturing me about the decision to hire you for this.” It wasn’t said accusingly, but it was firm, even if her voice didn’t rise above the level of normal speech. Something bothered him about what he’d found, and she didn’t know if it had anything to do with her own jail history, with something Luke had done between here and New York, but there was definitely something.
Silver tapped his fingers on the top of the wheel, one at a time, first, second, third. Silver had blunt fingers that were chapped with the amount of scrubbing he did to get the oil out of his cuticles, and they had a natural capability to them. You could put things in those hands and expect them to stay safe. He lifted one and pulled off the sunglasses. His eyes seemed unexpectedly warm and human under the blank glass. “Mr. Henry’s history has patterns, patterns of a person that is trying to avoid exactly the kind of thing you hired me to do. He has an obvious desire for privacy, and whether or not he has a good reason for that is beside the point. I am not involved with more information than I intended to have, and I’ve given a lot of that to you, and I don’t know what you’re planning on doing with it. I feel like I’ve taken something from this man. You might not understand that.” He paused. “Also the search caused some attention I would have liked to avoid. But that’s less important.”
The unexpected warmth in his eyes made her relax slightly. That was the problem with facades, they were hard to maintain in the face of unexpected things, and she sighed and looked out the window at the long row of shops before immediately responding. “You didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know,” she said, still guarded in her tone. “Or, rather, that his brother didn’t already know. We just want to help him, Silver.” She looked back at him, her tone going very certain. “I don’t think there’s anything much about him that I can’t already guess. I just didn’t have an address; that’s all.” She couldn’t be sure if that would make him feel better or not, but she hoped it did. The bruises and scars on Luke’s torso had already alerted her to the things Silver hadn’t quite managed to figure out yet. “Attention?” she asked finally, with a cock of her head that said she was assuming the attention wasn’t good at all. “Can I help?” Could her money help?
He smiled. At least Silver never smiled false smiles. “No.” It was a firm, unequivocal answer. No, it was definitely not in her power, financially or otherwise, to help. “It’s not a large problem.” The smile slowly loosened and finally slid away. “So now you have an address. And you’re going to visit?” He raised his eyebrows very slightly, not far, just enough to suggest he thought that a cold visit might be a bad idea. He didn’t show a change of expression at the mention of the brother. She hadn’t hired him for a family history.
“No,” she said honestly. “He won’t want to see me. I only wanted to know how bad the complex was,” she said, because there was no point in lying about that. She only lied when she needed to, and there was nothing to be gained from lying to him about this. Her gaze said she didn’t believe his problem wasn’t a large problem, and that was evident in the blue-gray of her eyes. “If I can help, are you going to be stubborn and refuse to allow it?” She was a little bristly about people letting their pride get in the way of accepting help, even though she knew it was hypocritical, knew she had been the expert at refusing charity in her youth.
He noticed. “If I have good reason. But it won’t be because I don’t feel like it,” he said, openly amused. Silver was definitely not a prideful man. You can’t work in intelligence and be proud. Proud meant a fondness for your own name, your signature on life, and the essentials of intelligence were to blend in, pass by, and go unnoticed. “I appreciate the offer, though. If you’re not going to go see him, what are you going to do? Wait until he goes through the door?” It was just a guess, but the timing was too much of a coincidence.
That appeased her, even if his amusement made her feel like he was teasing her about something. She was too serious these days, and she knew it, but it was hard not to be when your past was catching up with you, and when you knew everything you were doing was only digging a deeper hole. “I’ve already seen him. I just meant I wouldn’t show up at his door out of the blue. I’ll go through his brother in order to help him. I have money, but Roger has his trust.” As for the capital-D Door, she shook her head. “No. This has nothing to do with that.” At least that was true. She and Luke might share a door, but wanting to help him had nothing to do with that at all.
“It will eventually. That’s going to seep through everything we do soon enough,” Silver said, gravely. “You and Luke knew each other in Seattle or New York, I assume?” A lot of prying, but Silver wanted to know what he was getting into, because there was no doubt he was definitely going to be involved at some point or another. He didn’t know yet whether the alarms he had set off with his search were going to make it back to Luke. That could go either way, and Silver wasn’t going to waste his time worrying. He’d prepare and then wait for the response, and that would have to be enough.
She quirked a brow when he mentioned Seattle. “Did you look me up too?”
“No. You asked about him and you had enough preliminary information that he wasn’t a passing acquaintance. You met him at some point or another in the past.”
She smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. She didn’t believe he hadn’t looked into more things than he said he had, not for a moment, and she started to wonder how good he was at adding things together. She’d made a fortune once, blackmailing someone with a lot less information than he had. “We knew each other in New York,” she finally said, because he’d admitted to knowing Luke was in New York, but not in Seattle. She didn’t want to give him anything he didn’t already have. “A very long time ago.” That smile remained, the one that was polite, but not warm.
That told him all of nothing, but it was his fault for asking an open-ended question. It wasn’t vital he know, but he wasn’t just curious, either. He sighed and looked away, out and over the road. “Have you figured out who you are through the door yet?” Tony was interested now, interested as he had not been in any of Wren’s problems or Silver’s morals.
“Yes,” she said, because the door was something that they were on equal footing about. Well, no, she knew more about his person than he knew about hers, and she liked that power dynamic better than the one where he made her choose between the front and back door of his car. “I went through. Did you?” she asked, thinking back to his technology and the information she knew about the person in his mind. “Is he from a comic?” Because everyone she knew had people from comics; why shouldn’t his be the same?
“Movies. The one with the robot suit.” Silver thought a second, eyes on the ceiling. “Comics too. Which explains the big personality.” Tony took that as a compliment, though Silver hadn’t meant it that way. Silver shrugged slightly. “It could be worse. He is trying to bargain for more time there, and I can’t say I blame him.” Wren was handling this very well, and Silver approved. The number of people who had called him crazy was beginning to wear on him, despite his naturally resilient personality.
“Movies,” she said, because she hadn’t realized that was an option. “Mine is from comics, but she won’t tell me anything, and I don’t know anything about her. I’m considering looking for information, but there are hundreds of comic versions of characters. How do I even know which one to research?” she asked. The question had been going through her mind since her last talk with Roger, and she ran her fingers over the silver tumbler as she thought. “I don’t know who the one with the “robot suit” is.” Wren was, as always, woefully out of touch with pop culture.
Tony was insulted (and a little disconcerted) to realize there was someone in the modern world who did not know his name and life story. Silver smiled at his spontaneous irritation and took out the fancy blue square of glass with its multiple white displays. He turned it upright, handed it to her, and told it, “Play Iron Man, two-thousand-eight.” The screen immediately launched the movie, which looked to be about halfway through. Iron Man was flying around avoiding missiles. The little device’s sound was very good. “That’s him.” Silver returned his attention to the road.
Wren held the blue square in her hand, and she watched the red-gold robot fly around for a few minutes. She looked back at Silver moment later, and she wanted to ask him about her own source, but she was stuck between not wanting to give anything way and wanting all the information she could find. She looked back at the screen, somewhere between concentrating and trying to decide how much she trusted this man beside her. In the end, she handed the square back. “You’re not worried you’ll be killed in there?”
“Stop,” Silver told the device, and the movie went dark. The screen was again lit up with its usual arcane statistics and scrolling information. Silver’s comfort level with the strong technology had clearly gone up in the intervening days since Wren had last seen him with it. He left it in his lap and put his hands back on the wheel. “No more than I am about dying here. Death is death, and it comes to everyone, eventually. What Tony does is--usually--important.” He glanced at her, tipping his head at the question, which was profoundly bleak (in conventional terms, not Silver’s) for someone who lived in Sin City. “Why do you ask? Yours does dangerous things?”
“I didn’t say that. I was thinking that flying around in a robot suit, while avoiding missiles seemed pretty dangerous,” she clarified. “Is he a vigilante?” Because she didn’t know any vigilantes that dressed in suits like that, but it definitely looked like a suit of some kind. “It’s a live person inside there, isn’t it?” That question came with a frown of uncertainty. He was nonchalant about death, but she wasn’t particularly comfortable with the subject. Her maman’s death was still fresh in her mind, ever present when she thought about dying. Vigilantes died; that was one thing she knew for sure, metal suit or no metal suit.
“Oh yes, that’s him,” Silver said, nodding. “He is a law unto himself but he’s too much of a showman to be a vigilante, I think. And the government keeps asking him for things, so he’s sanctioned, if I’m not mistaken. For most things. The words ‘no fly zone’ do not apply to him.” Silver shook his head, naturally impressed by the idea that the government would allow anyone off their leash, even in a comic book. Tony had an answer for that with the image of the one-eyed colonel, and Silver smiled, but didn’t add that to his explanation. “It’s very dangerous. He laughs it off, but it is.” He noticed she didn’t answer his question, but he let it go.
“But you’re not worried he’ll get you killed?” she asked plainly. “It isn’t even your cause.” She knew all about causes. She’d risked her life for enough of them as a teenager, and she had to work fairly diligently to keep herself from caring now. But he seemed unconcerned about any of it, and she wondered if that said something about the kind of man he was. She knew that, somewhere along the line, she had developed an impression of him that was turning out to be wrong. His reaction to her request for information about Luke was indicative of that - maybe this was too.
Silver considered it. “If I had a cause, then I would expect Tony to understand it.” Silver leaned forward on the wheel, resettled his weight, and pulled thoughtfully on the white shirt where it bunched behind his shoulders. “...And it is a cause I happen to agree with. It took a great deal to turn Tony into the kind of person that believes in a cause. I respect that about him.” She might notice that Silver talked about Tony as if he was real, something very few of the others ever did. It seemed that coming from a movie did not make Tony less real to Silver, or cause him to respect the other man any less. There were many things about Tony that Silver didn’t like; that was not one of them.
Wren didn’t point out that he hadn’t answered the question, because she was pretty sure the answer was hidden in that explanation. Instead of making her feel better, how much Silver seemed to like the person in his head, it made her worried that this change, this willingness to take risks, was caused by Tony’s very presence. She didn’t like what that meant, and she didn’t spend nearly as much time thinking about Selina as he seemed to spend thinking about his situation. Maybe they just approached it differently, but it was a divider, she thought. “I’m sitting here, with you, and it’s just me. I think our experiences with this are different,” she explained. Selina was there; she knew that, but she didn’t involve herself, and Wren didn’t feel particularly familiar with the other woman.
“Tony is loud,” Silver agreed, genially, with the same adjective he used every time someone asked him what Tony was like. “I have the ability to push him away from my experiences and my self, though. It takes concentration and some time, and in all likelihood he would fight me, but I can do it. Perhaps yours, whoever they are, have no interest, or perhaps something of their own to hide. I think it depends upon the personality; theirs and yours.” Silver meant this to be encouraging rather than frightening.
She shook her head. “I’m glad I’m still just me, Silver,” she said truthfully. Maybe it was because her experience was different, and maybe she was too private herself, but she liked it this way. Roger thought it was a bad thing, that she didn’t have a relationship with Selina like he did with the teenager in his head. Silver was trying to be reassuring (she could tell), but she didn’t think she needed reassuring, not about this. “I have enough going on that I don’t want to add anything else to it. What happens through the door, dealing with the aftermath of that, it’s plenty for me.” She was being honest, and it showed. There was none of the coolness in her tone, none of the guarding. For Wren, there were other things that were much more important than Selina; it was just how things were.
‘Aftermath’ implied necessary damage control, and it suggested that Wren already had to deal with consequences resulting from what was beyond the door already. This was interesting to Silver only in a peripheral sense, but it still implied a distinct lack of trust that he should not have taken so personally just then. He was getting involved, and he knew the signs, but the nice thing about being retired is that he could get involved in whatever he wanted to. “I have very little ‘going on.’ Tony finds my life boring.” Silver grinned, showing the edges of one eyetooth in a wolfish fashion he had not shown up until that moment. “I’m not telling you that you should share, but I am telling you that you don’t have to be a victim of whim.”
Now he sounded like Roger. And that grin, that grin was better suited to a playboy’s face than to his normally earnest one. “You’re not worried he’ll try to make your life more exciting?” she asked, a layer of wariness coating the words. That smile made her wonder who she was talking to, and she looked at him a little harder, a little longer. Finally, she shook her head, and then she pushed an escaped strand of hair off her cheek. “I’m not a victim of whim. That implies I’m not in control here; I am.” This conversation was getting too close, too personal, and she tried to stay away from anyone becoming too involved in her life. “For me, she isn’t the most important thing I have going on. She’s somewhere near slot five on the list, Silver. It’s fine. I’m fine,” she explained steadily.
Silver sighed, the wolf gone. “I know you are. I wasn’t saying you weren’t.” He gave up on trying to communicate with her about finding a balance, and again focused on the road. He shook his head, obviously not worried at all that Tony could have an effect on him without him realizing it; Silver knew himself too well, and while he was sober and contained, he had his own calm sense of humor and he could grin without it being the playboy billionaire. The hard stare she gave him just earned a bland, beer bottle look in return, and the passing cars no longer held his interest. “You still want to get out here, or shall we get back on the road?” He was smiling, just a little.
She smiled a little in return. “Yes you were. You’re worried, or you wouldn’t use a phrase like victim of whim. You’re not the only one who I’ve had this conversation with,” she added, pulling the sunglasses back down. “Here is good. I think I could use the walk,” she said, but it was an easy statement, not one that indicated she was uncomfortable or felt a pressing need to leave the car. “I’m not accustomed to talking to anyone for this long,” she admitted, a touch of vulnerability in the admission. She reached for the door handle, and she picked up her coffee tumbler after hiking the bag onto her shoulder. “Thank you for your discretion,” she added.
She would insist that he thought her weak. He resisted the impulse to sigh again and readjusted the glasses so they hid his gaze again. Once more he was impersonal. He didn’t open his door to retrieve her bag or open her door, but he knew that it wasn’t likely he’d ever have reason to open the passenger door for her again. He wasn’t exactly pleased about it, and he knew it was not wise to feel sorry for the statuesque Minette, either. “We can talk whenever you like. I’m not the best at it, either.” He frowned at the wheel, at the road.
She climbed out of the car, and she pulled out an additional set of bills, which she set on the seat carefully. She noticed the frown, but she didn’t understand the reason behind it. Men, she found, were difficult to understand outside of sexual situations. Her entire situation with Luke proved that she wasn’t very good at the things that happened outside of the bedroom, and her decision making left much to be desired. “I think you’re better at it than I am,” she said of talking to people and, with one last smile, she closed the car door.