Viv Vision (01010110) wrote in incompletedata, @ 2017-12-31 01:18:00 |
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Daisy was right, as usual. It didn't feel like Christmas here--even for a girl who had spent 18 Christmases in New York City. It certainly looked like Christmas. But Christmas was about family, and if you couldn't be with family, Christmas could at least be about a mission. Without either, it was just kind as cold and industrial as the lights of the city and the park reflected off the snow on the ground. She had a team--off the record of course--and she'd done her best to find a variety of missions in the same way her natural drive had kept her going through London and the Arena and whatever challenge of the month presented itself here. Though it was all free agency. Nearly two months out, and Sharon seemed more interested that Maria experience downtime, not PT, not time-filling detail work, but playing like some child. But if that was the hoop she'd have to jump through, she would. Physically, Maria was throwing herself into it, mentally she couldn't. But her gloved hands industriously rolled snow into a perpetually larger ball, one of three--the middle one. She hadn't built a snowman in ages--she hoped she knew how. But, it was one of the first things she saw when she joined AA so held a nostalgic place in her heart. Maybe that would feel like Christmas. Or at least it would keep an eye on the Mike master balcony. Her feet left tracks in the snow, long and winding behind her as she meandered just outside the compound, Sparky excitedly pulling her along on his leash to sniff at each tree. It was a rather basic concept, a physical reaction to the force of her mass being exerted against a much lighter substance. Compacting it with a crunch. Crunch. Crunch. There were other tracks, some fresher than others. Some belonging to animals. Some in pairs or alone. It probably shouldn’t have fascinated Viv as much as it did, but watching Sparky prance through the snow without a care that he was suddenly unable to float helped her worry less about her current state. (At least she hadn’t broken down like that Janet, her programming messed with so publicly. Viv would have been mortified if it were herself in that situation.) Following another set of footprints a bit farther she could make out a figure, though unable to visually zoom in it was difficult to immediately identify who. If it were somebody she knew, it would be socially polite to go out and greet them. If it was somebody she didn’t, it could lead to an awkward interaction she preferred to avoid. But the coat was green, which narrowed her options significantly. “Maria, hello!” she called out, waving to convey happiness to see her she approached. It was one thing performing downtime activities. It was another case entirely being caught by someone she knew essentially playing as if she were some sort of teenager. Maria's face flushed a little, she hoped it passed as a response to the cold air, but like any good agent, she quickly recovered. Viv was a good friend. Codebreaking in London and then Pokemon training together had been functional exercises within the scope of mission parameters that could probably also be counted as 'fun'. She probably wouldn't judge Maria for an early afternoon spent building a snowman. "Hey Viv!" she called back, waving in a similar gesture. She wasn't exactly beckoning her to come over, though she expected she would. But she wasn't not either. The black dog pokemon rolling on its back in the snow a few feet behind her did though. Recognizing the other girl's voice, or Maria saying her name, the Umbreon jumped up at the sound of the other girl with a yapping Bre! and bowled over to her. Maria wasn't able to repress a grin as she set down the snowman's torso to get up off her knees and follow the dog. With an excited woof in response to greet a new friend, Sparky bounded forward on the leash, and for the first time seemed to realize his physical limitations as Viv didn’t move quickly enough resulting in a sharp halt as he met the extent of its reach. A whine and another tug and Viv dropped the end of the leash, feeling bad that she was unable to properly communicate the cause of his fixed density with their data transfers offline. But the moment was quickly forgotten as Sparky went about happily sniffing the pokemon, tail wagging without a care. Dogs didn’t understand, or perhaps they did, but they never seemed to let it bother them too much. A quality that she envied, her tendency to worry and dwell so illogical to system efficiency. Sometimes she wished her father was around to ask why he programmed her with such flaws, but… Close file. Save changes? No. Viv let herself laugh as the two engaged in playfully tackling each other in the snow, looking over to Maria once more to see if she was doing the same. Laughter always felt better shared. “You’re building a snowman?” She changed the observational statement to a question a bit too late, intonation awkward but too late to fix it. “That is an activity typically done with friends.” Footprint analysis showed that nobody else was around, even if they had run off to get missing supplies. This indicated that Maria had intended to do this alone, and inviting herself to join would be rude. Maria looked back at the mostly formed balls of snow, on the one hand, pleased with herself that they were recognizable for what they were. But it wasn't hard to catch the puzzle in Viv's voice. "Uhhhhhhhhm" Maria exhaled the word over several seconds like a deflating balloon as she figured how to exactly explain why she was building a snowman alone outside the compound. It wasn't exactly homework, but whimsy didn't sound too convincing coming from her either. Both sounded better than the implication that what she needed to work on before returning to SHIELD was being a human being. Of course she wasn't well rounded--she was goal-oriented. "Yeah… I guess I thought it would be festive?" The vocal fry didn't even convince her. Maria shrugged it off and reached down to hold a hand out to Sparky so she could scratch his neck. ."Do you want to help me?" Viv could accept the weak explanation and choose not to probe further, because Maria hadn’t called her out. That’s what friends were for, she’d come to experience. She took a moment to consider the offer she’d hoped was coming as not to appear overly eager to join in, and then nodded. “Yes, I do.” The vocalization was redundant. Her brother might have teased her mercilessly for it, and while it used to get her worked up, she’d been missing it more and more lately. Having a fake family imposed on her and just as quickly taken away, just in time to experience the family-oriented holidays all lined up neatly in a row. Billy and Pepper had tried to reach out and make it better, and for that she should have been grateful, but it was still a reminder of everything she had already lost so early in her life. She wondered if any of her friends suffered the same struggles, hadn’t ever heard Maria talk about any family at all. Maybe Viv just wasn’t the type of person others chose to confide in, and she supposed that was okay. She wasn’t the best at being comforting. But she could roll a ball out of snow, in theory. “I haven’t done it before,” because disclosure of skill level was important in team tasks. “What should I do?” To someone training in the military there was no such thing as too much redundancy. The double affirmative drew a satisfied nod. "I haven't in forever myself." She admitted. Maria was actually fairly open for a spy--frequently too open. Somehow personal stories just never came up. It was nice to hear about other people's families, but easy to feel that a single mom from the Bronx wasn't quite on the same scale. Then again, by most rubrics, a girl from a single mom in the Bronx didn't usually compare to Avengers. Maria liked to think she did. And she could conquer snow as readily as anything else. "But … I mean. So... basically, you just roll the balls and pack them down." She knelt down picking up the ball she had been working on. "The head's done, and this is the torso? It needs to be like… basketball size? And then…. The base is… there. It needs to be beach ball sized?" While a basketball had a known standard size, having participated in the game herself in high school gym, Viv was less certain about the exact dimensions of a beach ball. They had played out on the beach after London, but there seemed to be a variety of sizes. She assumed larger than the basketball if it were to function proportionately as the base, but it seemed like a stupid question to ask for specifics, feeling vulnerable with her inability to wirelessly access any networks to look things up. Viv didn’t like to second guess herself. She didn’t like to be wrong. “I will complete construction of the torso,” she decided instead to bypass the issue, though looked to Maria for confirmation that it was okay before taking the partially constructed ball of snow she had been working on before the interruption. It was her project, after all, and Viv was determined to make her first snowman perfect. In the hopes that she’d be invited to do more things. (It didn’t hurt her feelings that she had been left out of the Christmas sleepover. Logically she knew it was because she hadn’t attended their school. Selfishly she was glad their version of herself didn’t exist here, doubting they’d have much use for her at all if so.) Patting the snow tighter to make sure it was sturdy, perfectly spherical, and to the precise measurements of a basketball as instructed, Viv waited for Maria’s approval of the torso. Maria had thought to finish the torso herself, but Viv's decision had seemed so confident, that she'd hardly registered letting her before the torso was out of her hands. It had been like that when they'd been Pokemon masters as well. Viv had a strategic eye and a calculating mind that had helped them form optimal teams to defeat trainers, gyms, and even the elite four. So that was probably a good instinct for snow construction too. She reached out for the dog settled back beside her and moved to shape the torso. But she was no automaton. Maria was slower in shaping the largest ball which absorbed some lumpiness from the uneven earth but grew steadily in diameter. Viv returned with an icy sphere. Maybe she should have let her do the head. "Are you sure you haven't done this before?" Viv took that to mean she had done a better than expected job for a first-timer, rather than a questioning of her honesty. Or memory. She wasn’t sure which she’d take more exception to. “I am sure,” she confirmed, Sparky barking out in agreement. He liked to get underfoot as she worked, tail wagging and probably thinking he was far more help than he was. “Do I set this upon the base?” she asked, rolling it closer in preparation of putting the pieces together. “Or do we need something to stabilize the connection first?” The two sticks that Maria had already gathered seemed intended for arms. Maybe additional sticks were unnecessary in keeping the snowman structurally sound. She hoped she wasn’t overcomplicating what was supposed to be a rather easy and straightforward process. "No. I just meant it looks really good, Viv." One of the things Maria got about Viv was the same flash of panic and overanalysis of every comment. It maybe wasn't what Nick Fury would do, calming that nerves with such direct words. it was sometimes what Sharon did when Maria started spiraling. But if was definitely ehat Maria Hill fid, in the moment. Besides Viv was a friend, not necessarily an agent (#yet). She offered a smile and set to stabilizing the snowman's… legs? Maria had never been sure what it was meant to represent exactly. "I mean." she continued, brushing off and flattening the top. "Mine's a mess." "But I think it will stay. I think gravity holds it? And you maybe pack extra snow around it?" Any insecurity that Viv felt about her lack of experience was eased by looking at Maria’s lumpy base. Yet it served its intended purpose. Maybe the point of a snowman wasn’t about making it just so. “Gives it character,” she repeated a phrase she heard before about things that were acceptably incorrect. Unique. And apparently it wasn’t meant to be a long-term monument anyway. Snow wasn’t an ideal material for such. Lifting the torso with a bit more of an effort than it would usually take than when she could adjust her density, Viv settled the ball on top of the other. It began to shift as she moved her hands away, instead having to hold it in place. Apparently a perfect sphere wasn’t the best choice to fitting two surfaces together. “Yes, you maybe pack extra snow around it,” Viv echoed. Maria shook her head. "Well I've never been graded on playing in snow--" she hesitated at the end of that sentence. That actually wasn't strictly true. "Well OK. There was a merit badge for it in my brownie troop, I aced the snowball fight and snow angel components, but I don't think my friend Carmen's sister--she was our troop leader--had any standardized rubric for assessing our snowwomen." As she told the story, she started scooping up snow and packing it around the area where the two snowballs met, trying to stabilize the round ball while Viv held it as steady as it would stay.It briefly crossed her mind to suggest flattening Viv's ball too, or that they'd have to to attach the Snow Director's head. But it came a little too late as the ball was already being packed into a snowman's torso and losing its defined shape. She guessed they could try flattening the bottom of his head. Besides. She went on to defend the snowman. "His trenchcoat should cover some of the shape." Not that there was one lying around. It was coming together as well as she could have hoped, even if the work she had put into shaping the snow seemed to have been for nothing. The overall goal was still on track. “Trenchcoat?” she questioned, taking her hands away when the structure seemed to be able to support itself. Viv had seen pictures of snowmen before and knew the general concept of what they were supposed to look like. They sometimes had scarves. Hats. Even mittens. But a trenchcoat seemed atypical of the archetypical image of a snowman based on her limited data on the subject. Especially for somebody like Maria, who liked to do things by the book. Except there didn’t seem to be a coat in the pile of supplies that Maria had prepared. A carrot nose, the stick arms… one. One stick arm. Viv stared for several nanoseconds at where there used to be two sticks and now was only one, trying to process what happened to it. Umbreon’s excited barking caught her attention and she turned, gasping in surprise at the sight of Sparky frantically digging a hole into the snow. The missing stick at his feet. "Sure." Maria turned around to get the snowman's head, taking some time to try to smooth it out like Viv's portion had been. It had been freezing and setting since she had finished it, so was a little denser than she recalled it, but with a little effort she was able to smooth out the top some. It was still a little lumpy, but if she were being perfectly honest, so was the SHIELD director's head if you looked closely or long enough. Maria Hill had. "I was going to dress it up like Director Fury." She stood up and gently placed the head on top of the torso, holding her breath as she waited to see if it would stay. She smoothed downward trying to join the two parts, and while she did that looked towards what Viv was investigating. She kept her hands pressed against the snowman's cheeks, but dropped her own jaw. "Oh!" "Sparky! No!" Sparky yes. As Viv approached with her hand outstretched to take the stick back, he snatched it up and took off, glancing back to make sure he was being chased. When Viv didn’t automatically pursue, Umbreon did instead, round and round the two dogs chased each other until Umbreon tackled Sparky into a pile of snow. The stick was dropped and forgotten about as the two pups playfully wrestled, and Viv used that moment to take the stick back. She brushed it off and studied it carefully for damage. “There’s a few chew marks,” she reported to Maria apologetically, trudging back through the snow to deliver it to her. “Still think it’s okay?” If it hadn't taken so long to find reasonably straight, reasonably thick sticks with good handlike branches at the end of them, it would actually have been kind of adorable watching the dogs fight over it. It actually still kind of was. Umbreon seemed to like to have another dog to play with, Maria wondered if they should get together more often. "He has battlescars anyway, right?" She offered, taking the stick. She moved around the snowman, deciding which way should be the front. When she found a face to glare up at Mike, she nodded affirmatively. "I think this way?" She held the one stick up and mimed the second stick's placement with her free hand. This was shaping up. Maria made light indentations and moved up to consider the face. The stone eye could go there, she traced mentally with her finger. The eyepatch could go there, just next to it. And the frown could go right. there |