Re: marvel - log: max m/jack c
Max was young when she had Amanda. She was always a few years older than Corvus, but she'd been young for Brandon, and too young for anyone to look at her and think she was Luke's step-mom. Now, these days, she looked more than old enough to have a daughter who was seven, and Luke could absolutely be her kid, since Luke had one of those faces that was forever young. She'd gone from nearly-thirty to close-to-forty. She felt close-to-forty. Not physically, exactly. She still trained. She trained harder than she ever had when she was younger. Her hour run before sunrise went three hours these days, regardless of how hungover she was. She was at the gym every day after work. There was the constant concern about being too old for her job. Not her current job, but a real one, which she hadn't found yet in this place. Max knew her strengths, and soft-talking baby agents wasn't one of them.
She took another drag from her smoke. "I laid low for six months, in case it wasn't real. In case it was some other door in this fucking hotel." She finished her beer, and she tapped the bar for a fresh one. "Then, I went to New York and found Brandon. I was doing some work for him, covers for his people. I stayed at one of his places, saw Amanda every day. None of that felt real either." After Dhaka, after the hotel and powers that disappeared, nothing felt real. That was the problem. Max wasn't whimsical or dreamy. She liked solid. She needed solid.
"You? Other than the mess. The kid says you aren't with that girl, even though they tried to make it happen." The new beer came, and she took a swig.