Agent 22 (sitwell) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2015-01-20 01:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | !thread, akela amador, jasper sitwell (mcu) |
Who: Akela Amador and Jasper Sitwell
When: 18 January 2014, early morning
Where: Jasper's apartment, Brooklyn Heights
What: Two roommates discuss what HYDRA took
Rating: mentions of disability & long term imprisonment & interrogation. Not graphic.
As much as he hated to admit it, Mara Jade had a point. They all had. But it wasn't as if it had only now been pointed out to him. Jasper Sitwell was a changed man. This wasn't the first operation that cut him deep and he wasn't the first to have trouble finding his ground and center. But usually an agent didn't do that in the public light. Places like the Cuban plantation the Waterfall, his personal Xanadu though he'd never been, or assignments in Miami or Tahiti had always been more about rehabilitation and containment than apology or acknowledgement of sacrifice. But SHIELD didn't have those centers anymore, it didn't even have the courtesy of long shadows with the government so vigilant of the vestigial agency. But it wasn't just the operation, or the fact his masterwork mask fit poorly over the new lines of his face. It was the parts that had changed that he didn't know. He had always been angry, but was his violence towards Ward just that, or something trained in him? Was his reticence to speak a lifetime of being told to man up or a mental block? Had he always been as wretched as he felt? Jasper knew he wasn't handling this alone. He was amply supervised by watchers real and electronic and at an arm's length, but he was drawing instead internally, on past recuperations to find his way back home. This week had made him think about that a lot. But sitting at the newly built table in the sunlit Brooklyn kitchen, working what seemed to be a crossword puzzle in reverse and a cup of mulled Danish coffee cooling by the back of his right hand, he was able to ignore the doubts in his mind. He was almost able to pretend it was warm, far away, and things were normal--whatever that meant. -- At the very beginning of this project, when Akela had decided to join the team, when she had accepted the offer to stay with one of her teammates, she’d been expecting that she’d have to do a lot of work. Not just to find HYDRA, but simply to fit in-- to trust her team, to trust herself with a team. Pretending to trust, at least, and making attempts to garner trust, were objectives that she understood. She’d figured that she’d have to fake it until she made it, if she ever did. Much as she respected Coulson, she still wasn’t sure the qualities he’d thought she could have were really all that possible. But somewhere in the midst of all the hostility and distrust-- between Sitwell and Ward, then between Sitwell and Bucky-- she’d realized that it really didn’t matter anymore. Her own difficult nature was a small obstacle in the face of the grudges and betrayals that the others had to overcome. This wasn’t a team that was designed to be based on trust. And once she truly understood that, Akela suddenly felt that this was precisely where she belonged. It wasn’t a sentiment she could fully explain, even to herself. All she knew was that the very real problems that her team was experiencing had, in a strange way, validated all of her natural instincts to second-guess people’s motives, to expect them to let her down, to refuse to grow dependent upon them. It hadn’t lent itself well to teamwork before, but in this particular context, she suddenly felt that it was possible she was the most well-adapted of any of them to surviving and functioning in a strange team like this one. Which meant she had to put all of her efforts into making it work, lest she let them down. Well, she had always loved a good challenge. It would have been an exaggeration to say that the combined feeling of purpose and belonging was making her happy, but not too much of a stretch to say that she could feel content with it. Provided, of course, that things didn’t suddenly spin out of her control again. She emerged from her brief nap in Sitwell’s apartment to find him at the table. Without a word, she joined him, folding her legs neatly underneath herself on the chair. She wanted to talk to him, but wasn’t sure if he wanted to talk to her, and she could be perfectly content with sitting here in the sun or leaving him to his coffee and finding another opportunity. Testing the waters in a conversational way was not her strong suit, and she had just made the decision that she needed to play to her strengths rather than pretend to be better at this than she was. So she rested her hands in her lap, idly watching the sunlight as it came through the steam from his coffee, and waited for a signal that would tell her how to proceed. -- He noticed Akela was there, though didn't react immediately, finishing a corner of his project, words splayed off of ALBATROSS and meant as a message--or they would be if he could get the hang of this old technique. He looked at her with a nod, taking a break. Akela was often there, lurking in plain sight but wanting not to draw attention to herself--catlike really. She wasn't a roommate exactly, but the same sort of permanent houseguest Jasper had been with Mara Jade as he found his feet again. It helped him feel like more of a stable adult to be able to pay that forward. Not much did these days. And if he were honest, he was glad for the company--or at least the noise--of a second person, even if they seldom saw one another for their separate worlds: her the lofted bedroom, him the kitchen or living room couch. But there were indications of the others' presence: a changed channel, a moved dish, new milk in the refrigerator. Today there was new furniture. "The Coffee's fresh...ish?" Despite being on the outs with most of his new team, Jasper was used to a more convivial group. He wasn't certain he saw that for this one. Too many members had wronged too many others. But he was cautiously optimistic with Amador, and maybe even Barnes in time. He could see what Phil had seen in her. “The secret ingredient's rum." It was a little early, but if a week had ever called for it, he was off for a killer finish.. -- Despite the fact that she disliked relying on others, and that as a result her skills in building trusted relationships left something to be desired, Akela felt that she was a decent enough hand in understanding people. Jasper Sitwell was a difficult one, however. While her experiences with HYDRA had stripped Akela down to her most basic instincts and the core of her nature, his time undercover seemed to have only added more layers on top of the person he was underneath. He had been trained by Coulson and trusted by Fury, which meant something to her-- mostly the former-- and she understood that he’d done what he had to do for the job, whether he liked it or not. She felt relatively certain that his personal intentions, assuming they were not interfered with by HYDRA’s programming, were aligned with her own. And after the sushi dinner they’d had with Bucky, she was beginning to get a better grasp on how he operated, the way he manipulated the situations and people around him (in this case, his teammates) to get the desired effect. None of the things she was learning about him were any real cause for concern in and of themselves. She was still uncertain as to what she would have done, which side she would have taken if Bucky had chosen to attack him, although at the very least she would have wanted to avoid blowing all of their covers-- which was probably what Sitwell had been banking on. It hadn’t been the safest bet, though. The old Akela might have simply left them to her fight and slipped away unnoticed in the middle of the distraction. The new Akela… well, she was still discovering how much of a bond of loyalty she was capable of. But she probably would have intervened, to fulfill Romanoff’s expectations and her agreement with the team. To do what Coulson had always wanted her to do. And maybe more than that, to prevent HYDRA from claiming another life or two by turning them against each other. So she had changed, hopefully for the better. A day ago she might also have refused the offer of anything with rum in it this early in the morning-- but today she thought better of it. It might not be enough to truly affect her, but even if it affected her a little bit, it would be interesting to test whether her new abilities held up even under the influence. “Thanks,” she said, “I’ll get myself a cup.” But before she moved, she added, “Are you still working on that bionic eye?” -- "Top me off if you would?" He held out his cup as she moved towards the counter. He could get up, the crutch leaning an arm's reach away against the table would help, but it was more of an ordeal for him, and he resented that about himself. Jasper had always used running as a destresser, a time for compiling the million points of data from work and life and his own internal processors, and a manner of physically exhausting himself to match the whirling mental exhaustion 16 cups a day of coffee induced. Perhaps that annoyed him more than anything, that nothing could calm his speeding mind. "I've got a prototype sketched up," He reached over to get the crutch, supposing he would get up anyway and walked past the table to retrieve his tablet from the couch in the other room. He continued speaking as he did, moving a pillow to find the discarded tech. It usually wasn't this far away from him, but it had been nice to disconnect while Mara was here. "There's still some parameter testing being run, but it looks like it could move towards development." "I can show you." He came back into the kitchen and held up the tablet, "Maybe get some feedback from a pro?" -- Akela rose from her seat and took the cup from him. She didn’t mind doing him little favors like that, although she sensed that his pride would not appreciate it much if she offered. She filled up the rest of his cup before pouring her own, and returned to the table. Setting his cup back in its place, she resumed her cross-legged seat across from him, resting her forearms on the table, fingers curled around her cup. “I was just going to ask if it could be removable,” she said. “A certain amount of connection is probably necessary, but I’d like to be able to put it in and take it out myself.” Which didn’t mean it had to be easy. She wasn’t squeamish about performing operations on her own eye. After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “I just don’t want to have to be saved from it again if something goes wrong.” Which didn’t mean she wasn’t ever going to need help with it. But if she were incapacitated, she’d have more to worry about than just her eye. The fact was that if Sitwell were programmed to hide something in there, or if someone else were able to hijack the technology and use it against her, she wanted to be able to get it out of her body. Even if it was risky. She held out a hand to accept the tablet from him, interested to see what he had come up with. -- "Well I didn't plan for a self destruct function." He settled back down in his chair and slid it closer to the tablet. "But I can understand the concern. Mine the enervation goes both ways. Kind of like a dog collar." The apparatus was still actually in place, surgery for the who knows how manyth time this year hadn't seemed an appealing option, especially when he'd had to argue to keep it at all. but the command chip had been replaced. "They'd zap right up the thigh if I got too mouthy." He seemed like the sort of man who'd provoked that a lot. Jasper didn't let the statement sit. gesturing towards the tablet and picking up his coffee. "Triple tap to bring up projection." It was sometimes a test with field agents and Starkpads. He wasn't sure why they didn't give a basic training in academy. He took a sip of the cooling coffee, still warm from the rum and watched her. "Anyway." He continued, thinking aloud though his eyes were clearly working to visualize something his words weren't explaining. "Removable could be done theoretically. but it'd probably take more of an apparatus inside to anchor it." -- That was a new piece of information. Her gaze lifted to look at him with her one eye, momentarily distracted from the prospect of the eye. It wasn’t news that HYDRA used tactics like that, but Akela hadn’t realized it was something she and Sitwell had in common. Before she could say anything, he’d changed the subject. Which was probably just as well. She wasn’t sure what she would have said, anyway. It was the kind of experience best left untouched by conversation. Instead, she followed his instructions and tapped the screen three times. When the projection came up, she felt a mixture of revulsion and fascination. Fascination with the technology that might allow her to see with both eyes again, and an instinctive gut reaction that couldn’t help seeing it as a high-tech choke collar. She shook her head at the idea of adding more to the apparatus. Being able to remove the eye but leaving another part of it inside defeated the whole point. “It doesn’t have to be simple to remove,” she said. Her voice was quieter than it had been a moment ago, but steady. “I could learn to perform eye surgery on myself.” -- "No you couldn't." Jasper leveled her with a look somewhere between exasperation and concession. SHIELD agents were a stock of people as talented as they were stubborn. Most field agents could do a bullet removal with a spoon and a lighter. But Jasper doubted anyone could perform facial surgery like an eye removal--repeatedly on themselves. He reached forward and teased apart the schematics. He picked up his pencil from the table, twisting it to be a holoactive stylus. He tapped a part of the structure, turning it red. "So that's the apparatus currently in your head. It's mostly mounting for the eye itself. Some neurointegratory wire. It's kind of involved to be removed but also saves us having to come up with a new system. So that's good. " "That's where we'd put in the eye." His hand moved over to the blue diagram, expanding it. "So this is the eye, It doesn't have motion capabilities in its current form, but can see full spectrum, IR, UV, and can zoom through adjustment of the pinhole--- by squinting. It doesn't transmit or receive signals." As he spoke he peeled back the outer covering of the eye to show a complicated mass of circuitry and lenses where the visceral humor should be. "If we can manufacture it it should be a nice piece of work. But to make it removable we'd need some way for it to communicate with the stuff already in your head. This one has wires." He tapped again making them yellow. "You might have a problem with peripheral vision." "I get why you're nervous, but it is pretty cool. I have robotics texts on my drive which I can share if you'd like to try to read up on this yourself. And once it's in a cleaner form, I'll give the schematics to you to give to Coulson's kids or an outside consultant" -- Akela returned the look steadily, and maybe a little bit stubbornly. “I could.” She had no intention of doing it repeatedly. If she ever needed to remove it, it would happen once and it would never be going back in. “I’m not wearing something I can’t remove.” It wasn’t nerve-wracking, precisely. What she knew, and he didn’t yet, was that she didn’t need the eye as much as she’d needed it before. “Would going wireless make it more susceptible to being hacked?” Not that it was invulnerable the other way. Coulson’s team had managed to hack the feed, but then, he would have picked the best. Even if he hadn’t noticed the part about Ward. Other teams might not be so lucky. -- "My work doesn't get hacked." Which wasn't exactly true. Stark had done it a few times. Jeanne Foucault, that smug refugee HIll had let sift through his dirty laundry, had cracked his 400 year encryption algorithm in two months. Skye had done it. Arguably, Insight had been hacked, but he'd tried to plug in weaknesses wherever possible. Maybe his work did get hacked. But almost always by allies. Jasper frowned. "We could use a more obscure signal and a weak transmitter. The thought was to make sure the only one it's talking to is you. Keeping us out also keeps out potentially them. But I'll have to rework to make it unmountable. -- Akela raised her eyebrows at him, but based on his expression, it looked as though he’d reached the same conclusion-- or at least a similar one-- so she didn’t need to question his claim aloud. She examined the eye again, tilting her head to examine it at multiple angles. “I can deal without peripheral vision,” she said. “I can do without the eye, too, if it’s too much work.” -- "If we had an actual budget it could be more lifelike. But we might have to make a bake sale for this one. Can you cook?" Having lived together for nearly two months, this question should have been answered. But Jasper had taken up most of the slack, and seamless had done the rest. They tended to eat separately, regardless of who cooked. Which was why it was a little strange she had come down to sit with him. "But no trouble." He drew his mind back to the table. "It's a good challenge. I love projects like this and would go crazy if I had actual downtime." -- “I can,” Akela said. She gave him a slight smile. “I can also rob a bank. But it was a lot easier when I had… that.” She gestured toward the eye. She did understand the need for a project. The downtime drove her a little crazy, too. And she had been here long enough that she felt as if she owed him, even without the possibility of him restoring her sight. “Even if you’re only doing it for the challenge, I appreciate it.” -- "Hmm." That made him smile. It was a fine line an agent walked, upholding order while being skilled at infiltration, espionage, and assassination--to many onlookers, crimes more than caretaking. Maybe after a while, the adrenaline pushed them forward as much as the mission. "That's probably higher ticket then a bake sale. But banks are federal jurisdiction. How about a jewelry store?" He wasn't proposing they actually rob a place. Probably. Though planning it would be child's play. But he seldom got her talking, and that was has how Jasper Sitwell got to know people, not just who they said they were, but what their words said they were. "And it's not just that." It wasn't just about the challenge, or so machiavellian as to benefit LEOPARD, or even so selfless as to help. But more than that was difficult to explain: empathy? protectiveness? the strange fraternal bond that grew when two agents shared an SO regardless of time? He waved it off, brushing the eye to the side of the holographic projection. "You know you just missed Jade. She built this fancy table for us." -- “If we could find one that was a front for HYDRA, maybe.” Akela did know how to joke, and talk to people. It was just that so few people had ever gotten to know her well enough for her to have a real conversation with them. “There were a few I hit up for them, but you know what they say about returning to the scene of a crime.” She looked up at him, at his expression. There wasn’t much to read there, but the dismissal told her enough. Except, it made it difficult to return the sentiment. “I was wondering where the table came from,” she admitted. But it wasn’t as if it was a new thing for him to be acquiring new furnishings for the apartment. The moment for it might have passed, but she said it anyway. “You know, you’re helping with my sight-- I might be able to help you walk.” -- "Only do it with a badge?" He countered quickly. For the average criminal it was bad advice, but for an agent it meant controlling the scene. But the levity was cut short as she continued to talk. Jasper's gaze flicked to the aluminum crutch that had become an extension of his arm. It was better than the chair he'd dealt with before Geiszler fixed his leg, but it was still a constant reminder of what he couldn't accomplish. That he wasn't back to fighting fit, physically or mentally. He hated it, and he hated more that he was becoming accustomed to it. He looked back at her and raised an eyebrow. "You happen to have a spare spine in your ruck?" -- That got an amused look, in part because it was actually very good advice. “I’ll have to try that sometime.” But Akela returned to seriousness as the talk turned to his injury. She looked at him more carefully, assessing him for the first time with the same critical eye she had grown accustomed to using on her own body. Not looking for superficial flaws, the way the teenage girls she’d gone to school with had tended to do. Instead, she was interested in the alignment of his spine, the areas of tension in his muscles. “No,” she said finally. “But I’ve taken courses in anatomy and therapeutic yoga, among other things. Mostly for my own purposes, but… officially, they were geared toward preparing me to teach it to others.” She fixed her single-eyed gaze on his face, to see how he was taking the news. “At the very least, it would help with the pain.” -- . He didn't have a response for that. Sitting quietly for a moment to think on what she had said, Jasper wondered how much he had given away as he sat here, or how much had been apparent from the bottles in the medicine cabinet or trash. She was perceptive, he had to give her that, and she was more of a chance at recovery than finding an outside therapist who wouldn't comment on the high tech leg, or the pinterest board he had been using for at home PT to this point. It was hard to admit vulnerability, or that he might not be able to do this alone, and any weakness given was one that could readily be exploited. But a team was built on communications of shortcomings as much as talents, and he wanted to walk unaided again. Jasper nodded, and didn't hope to elaborate. "Alright." -- He wasn’t the only one who would be vulnerable in this process. There had been a time when Akela’s yoga practice was only for strength and flexibility, toning her muscles, optimizing her physical skills, but it had become much more than that. She had used it to retain her sanity in the mine, and after she was out but still held captive by her eye. She had done salutations to the sun and moon when she hadn’t even been able to see them; she had held poses for hours, simply because there was nothing at all to interrupt her; she had delved deep into her own mind to hide away from the fact that she was caged, captured, enslaved, her life and her agency given over into someone else’s hands. Some of that might arise in her consciousness even as a teacher. And whether he knew it or not, Jasper was likely to find something of that nature inside himself when he began his practice, too. Maybe he was already aware of it. She gave him the moment alone-- or as alone as she could manage-- to think it over, looking down at her cup of coffee as she sipped it instead of watching him, lest she even inadvertently discern his thought process. But the truth was she’d guessed that he was in pain from the moment they’d moved in together. Walking was an effort for him, especially climbing the stairs, and now she did a mental inventory of all the times she’d observed differences in the way he moved. All the little places where flow of energy was disrupted by the injury in his spine and the missing leg. She would have to ease him very slowly into the practice to avoid hurting him, start to unwind the smallest knots of tension and strengthen the muscles with the least effect on his injuries so that he would be able to support and withstand the most difficult and beneficial of poses. His agreement came finally, and she nodded, accepting it. She was aware of how much it meant for him to entrust her with this; if anyone understood the desire to be an island, or an impenetrable fortress of her own that never needed any outside help, it was her. “Let me know when you’re ready to start,” she said simply. She had no intention of touching on anything more sensitive, but dove right into explaining the details of what they were going to do. “I’ll need to pick up a few things to support you while you’re practicing, although there are a few things we could do without them.” There were ways to improvise with blankets and pillows and couch cushions, but since he was injured-- and since the apartment was still relatively sparsely furnished, which meant limited options to choose from-- it was probably better for them to have the standard blocks and bolsters that Akela had used in her early days practicing in a studio. At least those things were less expensive than the parts required to build a bionic eye. -- While his funds weren't limitless, he'd squirreled away or inherited enough to keep funding himself at least in the short term. His leg seemed like a good investment, even if he was only buying into a false hope. "I'll get you a check." Jasper understood yoga, though he didn't really understand the appeal of it though it was clear that Akela took something more from it. It was a facet of her that hadn't come across in Phil's stories of her or their interactions since teaming up. But it maybe explained a part of her survival strategy. "You take that seriously?" -- Akela shook her head. “Don’t. You’re already making me an eye and putting a roof over my head.” Not that she needed either of those things as badly as he needed to heal from his injury, probably. She didn’t know whether, between those things, they ended up even or if one of them owed the other. She supposed they could figure that out later, when they knew how well the eye worked for her and how much she was able to help him with his injuries. She met his gaze calmly and steadily. “It’s kept me alive so far.” -- He didn't argue, being all too aware how strange a headspace it was staying as an extended guest, even of a close friend. If paying for equipment was what it took to feel useful, it was probably more productive than cooking dinner and lining up a netflix queue. "When you get a place you can put up our next teammate while they get back on their feet." And she didn't have to explain any further. "Guess you've gotta have something." Amador had been captive four years in solitary before being used by Centipede as an unwilling assassin; he could see how yoga could keep a sense of identity through that, Ward was compulsively exercising, Barnes--he didn't have a read on him, but it had seemed he wasn't present between assignments. SERE training emphasized finding a center though that was a practicality not a spirituality. Jasper wasn't sure his open defiance would have lasted quite so long as a survival tactic. "I've used mantras, that's kind of similar." He wasn't sure why he opened up, but that she had about the same ordeal. "But they made the mistake of giving me someone to protect." -- Akela wasn’t entirely certain what to make of that statement, but if she understood him correctly, he was paying a debt to someone else by helping her. It wasn’t the usual way in which she calculated debts owed, but it was acceptable. There was more that she could have explained. That it wasn’t necessarily about spirituality; it certainly hadn’t been at first. “It’s good for the body and the mind,” she said simply. It went without saying, probably, that it was better than screaming into an empty void or self-destructing in some other way. “You can use mantras with it, if you find them useful.” -- "Shouldn't be necessary," Jasper countered, the flippancy returning to his verbal cant, even if the conversation hadn't really grown lighter. "I mean I tried hot yoga for about six weeks in 2013--that was rough, but not SERE training rough." SHIELD was about survival, and even beyond that, secrecy at the cost of all else. It didn't seem quite that way anymore. Jasper let that hang for a moment, and then "But I mean, you know my schedule. I'm easy." He did seem to fake a remarkable ease. -- The barest hint of a smile appeared at the corner of Akela’s mouth. “I don’t think rough is going to help you right now,” she said frankly. “What you need is room to heal, not an endurance trial that will probably only injure you even more.” It was hard work, being patient with yourself. She knew that from experience. With every skill she attempted to learn, Akela had extremely high expectations for herself-- and at the very beginning of her physical training, she’d pushed it way too hard and sometimes ended up doing more harm than good. She’d counteracted that with her yoga practice to ensure she was flexible enough to avoid injury but along the way had discovered that it had also given her a certain amount of extra patience. And then she’d been forced to do nothing but be patient, waiting to be freed from the mine or to die down there (though she’d refused to simply give up and die, even though she’d considered it hundreds of times), and she’d needed it even more when control over her own life had been wrested from her hands. She finished off her cup of coffee with a large swallow, and then unfolded her legs from underneath her. “I practice late at night or early in the morning. In the dark,” she clarified. Probably he understood her reasons for that. She’d grown accustomed to nothing but darkness in the mine, and after that, darkness had been the only illusion of freedom she’d had from her captors. It gave her a tiny bit of space to delve deep into her own mind and heart and try to work through her fear and anger and helplessness without feeling like they were watching over her shoulder. “Any other time, when we’re not working, is fine with me. You know my schedule, too.” -- "How about you grab me when you're done?" It wasn't exactly promising how much Akela's imprisonment still affected her behavior patterns, but that wasn't the sort of incident you walked away from unaffected, He made a note to look into better drapes. What had attracted him to this apartment, despite its stairs leading to the ill-used bedroom and its overly gentrified neighborhood, was the amount of light that spilled into the apartment. That and the kitchen. But he could get how priorities differed. "I'm a morning person anyway." He wasn't sure starting slow would help fight the sleep so much as a cup of coffee before hand, but he had never been one to take it slow either. No pain no gain was a mantra for pushing himself through the mental and physical walls his body built, both in the gym and in the field. That was probably what had gotten him in over his head in the first place. "But I think I'd like to push it. Fall off a horse you get back on, right?" -- Akela watched him for a moment, her expression inscrutable. She was weighing the risks to his health against the conflicts that would arise if she tried to dictate how he went about it, and ultimately decided the latter wasn’t worth it. “Alright,” she said. “We’ll try it your way.” |