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Tweak says, "It's all about the Pentiums!"

sharon carter is good at that spy shit (spyshit) wrote in timerift_log,
@ 2022-03-30 20:14:00

Entry tags:

mcu: james barnes, mcu: sharon carter

open scene!
WHO: Sharon Carter & James Barnes
WHEN: Afternoon, 30th March
WHERE: Bilbo’s Books
WARNINGS: TBD, but none for now

Sharon missed Madripoor. Deeply, achingly missed it at the moment. For a time, she’d desperately wanted her pardon, just to get home, to be able to see her family, to call them, even. Ultimately, the hope to get back them them had turned to bitterness and anger and in the end she’d still wanted the pardon, but it was mostly what it could do for her. It was resources and it was power.

Now she was here, where none of it meant anything. Most of the people here didn’t know her from Adam, but it still lacked something. The ability to truly slink into the shadows, maybe, or maybe it was just being faced with the prospect of Steve Rogers being right there. Maybe it was all her anger bubbling to the surface again when she thought about how abandoned she’d felt after everything. Maybe she was remembering how easy it would be to slink into the shadows and hide if she were home. In Madripoor, because that’s what had become home to her over the last several years.

Sharon sighed quietly as she slipped through the entrance to Bilbos books. The storefront had looked interesting and curiosity drove her inside to see more. Maybe while she was at it she’d even find something useful.

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russki
2022-04-01 04:22 am UTC (link)

The world was hardly what anyone would call right, but it was quiet with itself and while he was always waiting for the inevitable shoe to drop, for the moment James was kind of - very trepidatiously - at ease with most things. He was, largely, left alone and had a little slice of normalcy hidden away from the imps and the dwarfs (it really should be dwarves, shouldn't it? surely.), the wizards and their weirdly, sticky tar sweet food. He had Brooklyn all to himself, and he didn't really mind working in the pub on top of it.

Sure, of course there was a weird kind of, there wasn't any way to categorize it as anything but missing Sam, so that's what he called it when anybody asked. He missed his phone not being a useless brick save for the five songs he had downloaded that morning (the phone itself was now looking at a luxurious %4, just wasting away in a drawer back in the apartment). He missed. Well, nothing and nobody that he hadn't missed before.
Thing was, James was already headed in that direction, as he had this feeling that if anyone would have had a first pressing of the Hobbit not on eBay, this was going to be his best bet -- (that and maybe they'd have an interesting edition of The Silmarillion, because why would he start reading the trilogy before he got the history) when he saw something slinky in movement and taller than the majority (save for the science type) and then the bright blonde hair. Setting his shoulders a little and following a kind of curious feeling he hadn't listened to since he was young, James not so quietly followed after her. He wove around the corners and between the shelving, past magical histories and autobiographies (though it wasn't like they had a lot of history books that were non-magical, so he sort of wondered why there needed to be the distinction in the first place) and past a kid trying to find some semi-obscure text book for a university course that ..he looked way too young to be taking. But it wasn't like he was able to talk.

Trying to discern Sharon's footfalls from the others wasn't really all that difficult, it was the light sound that offset and interrupted the hard, purposeful steps of people actually looking for something rather than trying to find anything worth her interest. James had no plans on not announcing himself once he found her - as with his luck, she'd pull a gun on him and he still only had his knife and while his chances weren't bad, this place probably had expensive stuff in it.

So, rather than any of that, he waited for her to turn and ducked around into the aisle she was, apparently, trying to lose herself in. Both hands stuck in his jacket pockets, James nodded toward her before walking up close, eyeing the things on the shelves. "Do you want me to ask what a girl like you's doing in a place like this or is that going to get me smacked," his head turning just barely to see if she'd laugh or - smack him, his brow perched up with a little grin, "am I ruining you trying to stay scarce?"

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spyshit
2022-04-03 10:37 pm UTC (link)

Sharon laughed at the first question and shrugged at the second. If there was anyone she was avoiding here in Cardiff, Barnes didn't make that list. She wouldn't say she knew him well, but she'd spent enough time with him and Sam in Madripoor to be able to honestly say she liked them. Sure, she hadn't been entirely honest in their interactions, but there was a level of respect and she could easily say this man was one whose company she didn't mind. She also couldn't much of a grudge toward a man who'd barely known her, even if it had been his ass she'd been helping Steve Rogers save, for not coming after her or checking up to make sure she was doing alright after all of it. Not that Sharon Carter needed to be rescued. She had to admit, the gesture would have felt nice.

"Well, I don't see any flamingos handy, so you might be safe," she quipped back at him. Her eyes were on him now and not the book she'd been casually flipping through when he caught up with her.

"What makes you think I'm trying to stay scarce?"

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russki
2022-04-04 12:06 am UTC (link)

One day when they both had too much too drink and the atmosphere was right and perhaps if they both felt like chasing after the sickly tender feeling that vulnerability was, they could talk about how she stuck her neck out for him when he was barely a person and how Steve fucked her over and the way that he didn't have the common courtesy to at least kill him when he went back in time, saving a bunch of general problems and woes. And who knew, maybe that one day would be sooner rather than later depending on how this universe would work and what it had to throw at the both of them.

But. He liked her, he liked how she handled herself and how she didn't need to lean or rely on anything except herself for the heavy lifting. If she had a grudge against him, James wouldn't have blamed her in the least.

James frowned, his face all hangdog and tired, "I guess it'll have to wait for another day then," he shrugged, thumbing over a few of the spines of the books in front of the both of them. "I'm probably projecting, I'm always trying to hide," shrugging just barely while following ..some kind of ordering system that he had no hope of understanding, "You see The Hobbit around on any of these shelves," glancing up and then over at her, his curiosity honest and not trying to deflect onto anything else.

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spyshit
2022-04-10 09:29 pm UTC (link)

Sharon could barely remember the girl who'd been idealistic enough to help out Steven Rogers and his friends because it had felt like the right thing to do. It wasn't a choice she completely regretted, even after how it had all turned out, but that was mostly because she'd gotten to know James and Sam both a little better - well enough to know they were worth sticking her neck out for - but Sharon was past worrying about what was right versus what would give her what she wanted.

"Sorry to disappoint." Sharon's grin was genuine. There was something about James Barnes that was comfortable to be around. Maybe it was knowing that they were both fucked up, albeit in different ways. "There are people here I'd rather avoid, but you're probably not one of them." That was the truth, too.

"I haven't, yet, but I don't mind helping you look." It wasn't like she really had anything better to do.

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