Darcy is only half listening to you. JSYK. (halflistening) wrote in incompletedata, @ 2017-11-01 00:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | graceland: mike warren, marvel: mcu: darcy lewis |
Who: Mike Warren and Darcy Lewis
When: Mike’s first day
Where: The Stairwell
What: MEETING
Rating: G
Darcy was over this whole ‘broken elevator’ bullshit. She hadn’t been through enough in the last couple of weeks, what with being Reaped in the Hunger Games and then, oh, murdered? Now she had to walk down down six freaking flights of stairs just to get something to eat? And then back up those flights to get to her room in Romeo? Fuck that noise. If she found out who it was that broke the elevators she was going to kick them in the shins and spit in their eyes and if the scientists had a problem with that, then oh well. What were they going to do? Take away powers she didn’t have? Put her on trial for assault? Let them. After all the trials following the Games, she imagined the jurors weren’t going to want to spend more time trying people so soon. She was very nearly at the bottom of all those damned stairs when she heard someone coming behind her. Being polite, she moved off to the side, waving at whomever it was. “You go on ahead. This seems like a pretty good place to collapse for a few hours.” Mike hadn't been in this place long enough to feel quite like he had his bearings yet. Okay, who was he kidding? There was no finding your bearings in a place like this. From waking up in a cage, to not having most of his belongings (namely his gun), he couldn't see himself just settling in. Not having a working elevator to get downstairs for food seemed like a pretty small inconvenience in comparison to everything else, so it was at least one thing he was willing to go with. He was on the final stretch to reach the bottom when the person in front of him spoke. He'd been aware of someone walking in front of him, but they were far enough ahead that he hadn't seen them yet. He couldn't help but stop when she moved out of the way, though. Maybe it was a terrible thought to have, but she looked, well. She looked normal. Like someone he'd run into on the beach back home. She also had a look on her face like maybe she was about to ruin someone's day. "Thanks." He took another step down before stopping again, looking back at her. "Is everything -" Potentially stupid question, but he was committed now. "Are you okay?" “Nope. Pretty sure I’m dying.” Darcy leaned against the handrail, pushing her hair out of face. “This building is trying to kill me. I might just try to move into the auditorium.” She pushed her glasses further up her nose, giving the guy talking to her a look. Cute. Nice arms. He had that look of WTF about him, though, that seemed to signal a new arrival. She was very familiar with that look. After weeks there, she still often had it herself. “You look lost. Are you lost?” If it wasn't for the general weirdness of this place, he might have called her declaration a colourful exaggeration. Hearing those words from Charlie, for instance, signified that she was in the throes of what she dubbed a hellish hangover, and it was best for him to keep his distance. But in this place? He was beginning to think they could actually be worth genuine consideration. That wasn't a bad assessment on her part, all things considered. "I guess that depends. I know I'm heading downstairs. I'm at least mostly sure I'm going the right direction for food. Generally speaking though? Yeah, pretty lost. I'm Mike," he introduced. Darcy did a double take at the introduction. She blamed that sadistic fuck of a Scientist going by the same name for that reaction. But she blinked and shook herself a little before extending her hand. “Hey Mike. I’m Darcy.” “In general, this is the correct way for food,” she confirmed after shaking his hand. “Getting to the food is a lot easier when the elevator isn’t torn to shit. But it’s been a rough couple of weeks around here. You’re lucky they kidnapped you when they did.” He shook the offered hand, making a mental note of the slightly odd reaction but filing it away without comment. Time would tell whether it actually mattered or not. "Nice to meet you, I guess." Bizarre circumstances aside, it wouldn't hurt to have an ally in a place like this. He paused at her comment about being lucky. "I...don't know if that's ever a word I'd use for being kidnapped. But I'm prepared to take your word for it." She'd obviously been here at least a little while, anyway. Now that she’d had a bit of a breather and the burn in her thighs had eased up (that was supposed to be a good thing, right? Barbaric. She was so glad she wasn’t in Hotel), she started back down the stairs. “You missed televised murder. Ever seen the Hunger Games? It was that.” Darcy figured she earned the right to be flippant about it and anyone who didn’t think so could sit through a very graphic description about what it was like to get your head bashed in with a hammer. Spoiler Alert: It wasn’t fun. “I’m heading down to the diner. Want to come with?” "Uh, no. But I'll take your word for it." He'd heard of the movies, and he wanted to say they were books, too? But it wasn't exactly his thing. Still, he was pretty sure they involved teenagers trying to kill each other. So that told him enough about what she was telling him they'd just been through. "That sounds great." He followed her the rest of the way down the stairs, beyond grateful to have run into someone who, at least at this point, seemed to be on the same side as him. If sides were a thing here. He figured with what she'd just told him and the state of the elevator, that was a fair guess. "Have you been here long?" He laughed at himself as soon as he'd asked the question. "I did not mean for that to sound like a bad pick up line. Sorry." Darcy’s laugh was long and loud and it echoed against the walls of the stairwell. “It totally sounded a little bit like a pick up line, but shockingly- not the worst I’ve ever heard. That was-” she cleared her throat, dropping her voice an octave. “-Hey. Are your pants made out of mirrors? Because I can see myself in them.” Men could be ridiculous. “I’ve been here… shoot. A month? A little longer? It’s hard to remember because I spent some of that time in a cave.” Her response had him laughing about as loudly as she had. “Oh, wow. Yeah, that one definitely takes the win. I can proudly say I’ve never come close to using a line like that.” Then again, he wasn’t really a ‘line’ sort of a guy in general. He was pretty sure if he tried he’d come across as more creepy than funny or smooth. “You were in a cave? How does that work?” Well, he was certainly winning with the dumb questions today. “I mean, how did you end up in a cave? Here?” Darcy knew what it was like to be new and to not know what was going on, so she didn’t hold it against Mike at all. She was learning a lot about forgiveness lately and if she could forgive Matt for the way he’d treated her (kind of. She was working on it at least) then she could definitely forgive a little awkward phrasing. “It was the Hunger Games. I was one of the Tributes that got sent into the Arena, which happened to be a cave. Spending two weeks in the dark sucked and I am never eating another mushroom in my life, but on the plus side, my commissary account built up a little while I was gone. I figure I have more than earned a bacon cheeseburger and a shake.” She could tell by the color of his clothes that he was in Mike Block, so asking about that was useless. “So where are you from?” “Sounds like a fair enough trade.” Getting some kind of decent food here was a bonus, at least. It wasn’t everyday you got kidnapped and got cheeseburgers for your trouble. He figured the whole cave/hunger games thing was a subject she’d be happier dropping, if only because he knew it wasn’t something he’d really want to discuss with a stranger. “California. I was staying with some friends in a house by the beach. Which I get the feeling I’m going to miss. What about you?” Fair? Maybe not, but Darcy was going to take it. All things considered, she thought she deserved a lot more than just a crash diet, even if she had lost about ten stubborn pounds, and someone generously fixing the hole in her head. But that wasn’t something to bring up with someone new. No need to frighten him right away. This place was frightening enough on its own. “Oh, geez,” she said with a laugh. “Kind of all over? Mostly Pennsylvania, but my job has me all over the world a lot of the time. It’s far less glamorous than it sounds, believe me. I mostly see a lot of airports and hotels and lecture halls.” “Oh?” He asked curiously. “What kind of work do you do?” She’d said lecture halls, so he assumed teacher of some kind. Or maybe just an expert in her field. Whatever field that was. He’d been initially a bit more cagey about his own job, and he knew he had to make some decisions fast. How much did he tell people here? Would it even matter? “I grew up on the East coast. Moving to California was a big change, but I’ve never really travelled around like that.” She recognized that impressed look. Sorry, new guy, she was about to burst your bubble. “I am technically a research assistant,” she said, mentally adding a sad trombone to the end of that statement. If she was going to ever ask for a super power, she would want the power of adding her own sound and special effects to real life. How cool would that be? “My boss is a very in-demand astrophysicist and she gives lectures, like, all over the place. So most of the time I end up being more personal assistant. Which is an excellent use of my degrees.” Darcy pushed the door on the ground floor open and held it for Mike. “California is a big change from the east coast. Was the move personal or business?” He was going to ask what she meant by ‘technically’, but she gave a fairly good explanation of that herself. “What are your degrees? Something similar?” He had to assume. It would seem strange for someone to follow an astrophysicist around if they had zero interest in the subject. He walked ahead of her when she opened the door. “It was a work thing,” he explained. “Not my first choice, but I can’t say I mind the weather.” Or the house he’d wound up in. Though it was a toss up as to whether the perks outweighed the negatives. He leaned more towards the latter edging out the former, nowadays. “Not even close,” she laughed, leading the way toward the diner. “Political Science and Computer Science. My dream was to get into digital counterterrorism, but I tried to take a shortcut on my science credits in college by taking an internship. It’s been… shoot. Something like six years?” Six years and three alien invasions. Trips around the world. Yeah, it wasn’t what she’d thought she’d be doing with her life, but she wasn’t complaining. “So what do you do for work?” He personally couldn’t say he knew what that was like. Ending up doing something you hadn’t necessarily planned for. His entire life had been carefully planned out, each step calculated. Until he’d arrived at Graceland, at least. Since then it had all felt like it had been spiraling out of his control. And now...he honestly didn’t know what to think about what he’d seen. Nor did he know how to even begin to mention it out loud. But those six minutes had meant something, he knew that much. “Do you ever think about getting back into it? What you originally planned? Once you’ve left this place, I mean.” And there it was, the question he’d been anticipating and still didn’t know how to answer. In the end, though, he doubted it mattered much here. “I’m an FBI agent.” “I do,” she admitted, nodding. “I’m making a lot of good international connections working with Jane, so that’s a good thing. Most of them are in the wrong field, but they know people in the right field, so it’s something.” Now that was interesting. “Really? Like… Clandestine operations or something a little less James Bond?” “Knowing the right people is always a big part of any successful venture.” So she had that going for her. “For my part my knowledge of computers goes about as far as turning it on and using the databases at work or searching the internet.” If anything went wrong with it he had no hope. He probably shouldn’t tell someone like Darcy what had happened to his last laptop. Her question made him laugh. “I don’t know that I’d call it James Bond. I work...worked, undercover.” “You know how to turn it off and on again,” she laughed. “You're already ahead of the game there. So many problems can be fixed by that and almost no one does it.” But then again, her opinion was skewed. She was into that stuff and had been from a young age, playing computer games on the machine her father had bought for his business after school. Her eyebrows shot up when he admitted to working undercover. “Okay, that is seriously cool. What sort of cases were you working on before you came here?” “You probably don’t want to know what happened to my last one,” he admitted with a hint of amused reluctance. His frustration there had been nothing to do with software issues, but she didn’t need to know that. “I was under for a while with one of the major drug suppliers in the area. The last case was meant to be about drugs too, but it turned out to be about a sex trafficking ring, so..” He shrugged. The less said of that the better. That whole situation had not been a pleasant one. From Lina’s death to the breakdown of any hope of salvaging even a friendship with Paige. “Whoa, shit man. That sounds awful.” Darcy might have seen some shit, but it was never ‘sex trafficking ring’ bad. Even the Destroyer. No, strike that, even having to listen to Jane and Thor go at it like superpowered bunnies. “Are you okay? That can’t be an easy thing to deal with.” “Yeah,” he answered automatically. “I’m good.” He realised hearing the almost casual response to what he’d just told her probably came across as almost callous, so he kept speaking. “I mean, I am now. I can’t say it was a lot of fun. If you’ve never been shot I don’t recommend it. But we got through it.” Intact, for the most part. “I can safely say that I have never been shot.” And she honestly hoped she never was. “I was, however, recently beaten to death with a hammer.” She paused dramatically, because it was so underused in face to face conversations. “I definitely don’t suggest it. It sucked hard.” “That...does not sound like fun at all, no.” Because getting shot had been a pain he’d never experienced before. But being beaten to death? And by a hammer? He couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. “So you...died?” He was more familiar with that than he liked to admit. “And they could bring you back from that?” Darcy just nodded. “Hunger Games.” That pretty much said everything she needed to say about her actual death. “I woke up the next day in the medical ward. I assume. It was like those pictures of old timey tuberculosis hospitals and everyone who had died before me was there. And a few people showed up after, too.” “I guess that’s something, at least?” That she hadn’t wound up dead and stayed that way. He wasn’t going to pretend he wasn’t grateful she was around for him to have a friendly face to have run into. Even if there was more than one in this place. “Were you okay right away?” He wasn’t sure what recovering from death by hammer looked like, but she seemed physically okay now. “I’m not sure, actually,” she confessed, looking a little troubled. “Like, I don’t know if it was right away that they brought me back or if there was a little bit of time there. I don’t think I lost a lot of time, though. It seems like only about a day, but I didn’t think to ask anyone at the time.” Darcy sighed as she picked out a table at the diner and took a seat. She’d give the new guy the nickel tour later. “And everything was healed when I woke back up. Some of the weight I lost was back, which I was less than happy about, but I’m not going to look a gift healing in the mouth.” It was weird, to say the least. Though he understood a bit about losing time. It wasn’t always easy to reconcile just what you’d missed. “I can see how gaining back some weight beats the alternative, sure.” He sat on the chair opposite her, glancing around the room as he did. “The research you were assisting with. What did that involve?” Somehow he thought a change of subject was in order. “No clue, man,” she sighed, shaking her head as she handed him a menu. “I wish I knew, then it would make everything worth it, you know? But all they’ll say is that we’re helping humanity?” She wasn’t certain about that bit, but in this situation, she could hardly afford to question anything too hard. “You’re new, so order anything you want. My treat.” “Oh,” he laughed, realising she’d misunderstood. Which given the place they were in, he sort of understood. “No, I meant, not here. Back home.” Because this was most certainly not home and absolutely nothing permanent. He scanned the menu at her offer. “Thanks.” The phrase ‘silver linings’ came to mind. He had to find the positives somewhere. Darcy laughed with him. “Duh, that’s totally what you said, wasn’t it?” She should really learn to listen better. “My boss, Jane? She’s this super smart astrophysicist. She works on wormholes, basically, that allow super fast travel over vast distances. But it helps that her boyfriend is Thor, as in the Avenger, and he totally arrived on Earth in one.” That one made him pause. “Thor? As in, the norse god?” Also represented in a recent movie or two, not that he’d had the chance or inclination to go and see them. “I’ve read about wormholes. I didn’t really know they were actually something anyone had discovered, though.” Darcy nodded, folding up her menu and setting it aside. She knew exactly what she was ordering. “Yeah, that’s him. He’s pretty cool.” But she was biased toward him and she could acknowledge that. “We might not be from the same universe. Apparently that’s a thing too.” “Of course it is,” he almost muttered as he continued scanning the menu. He’d already read through it once but it almost felt like something normal right then. It made some kind of weird sense, really. No place like this could exist in the universe as he knew it. Darcy smiled, waiting for the grad student working the diner to come take their orders. “I didn’t break your brain too much, did I? Because I didn’t mean to.” “Maybe a bit,” he admitted with some reluctance once he’d made his order. “But I feel like that’s going to happen a lot in this place, so I won’t hold it against you.” Having a halfway normal conversation (the subject matter aside) was actually doing a lot for how he was feeling. “As long as it's only a little bit,” she said with a smile. “And maybe that’s the best way, you know? Rip it off like a Band Aid. Get it over with, then have a burger and fries.” “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of having a burger and fries as the solution to someone breaking your brain, but sure, why not.” There weren’t many alternatives to just sucking it up and dealing with it. Not until someone worked out how to get home again. If that ever did happen. “Oh, you sweet summer child,” she laughed as their orders were delivered. “There is very little in life that a good burger and fries won’t make better… or at least more tolerable. Comfortably full people are a lot more easy going than hungry people.” He had to laugh at being called ‘sweet summer child’ and what the implication of that was. With everything that had happened back home, everything he’d done, he didn’t think it was all that apt, any more. “I’ll give you that one,” he allowed. Hungry people were infinitely harder to convince. |