pennysheets | For Sabetha

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For Sabetha

It's been five days since he missed their rendezvous, vanished from all their usual haunts. Even with her connections and skills, it took that long for her to find this little sliver of HYDRA and find its root. The building Sabetha traced them to looks abandoned from the outside, an old hospital in a rural part of Russia, now overgrown with weeds. But the lock on the gate is new, and she'll note subtle security cameras. Not beyond her skill, though, particularly if she takes the time to note when guards arrive-- out of a dirt track in the back, not the main road-- and takes out one with the right size to steal her uniform.

She can sneak inside to the modern lab below ground, and she can slit the throat of the guard outside the white-tiled cell, and she can put said guard's eye to the scanner to open the cell, but inside she'll find not her twitchy but implacable companion in murder and thievery, but a blank-faced weapon that lunges for her as soon as she pokes her head in the door.

It's been over twelve hours since they last refreshed his programming, but it still rattles around in his skull. They don't have a Chair here, but they do know the Words, and it's only a matter of time before they reassemble a Chair to complete he recalibration. To make him truly mission-ready.

Something inside, deep inside, where the Words can't touch, doesn't want that. But he can't help but feel his body grab for the intruder, knowing his duty here, knowing he can only go with his new handler. She'll have to be quick on her feet to avoid him, but it's not impossible: they also haven't fed him in those five days, in the hopes of keeping him easier to handle if the brainwashing fails, and he's not nearly as fast or as strong as he ought to be.

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It takes him several minutes to get through it, and when he's finally swallowing down hiccups and just clinging quietly to her, he feels... better, a little. Somehow. Less like everything is overwhelming and horrible and probably going to try to kill him or wipe him again.

He doesn't move away yet, shifting his grip at her shirt to one around her waist again, though his flesh hand is curled up under his chin, between them. "Someday I'm gonna learn that one," is what he says first, voice quiet and kind of worn out. Crying is exhausting. "Then you can't keep secrets from me by using it."

He's not actually serious about the secrets thing.

Her shoulders shift slightly in a silent laugh, as much relief as it is amusement. If he's joking about her languages, then he is, while not okay, at least back on something resembling steady ground.

He doesn't move away, and neither does she, quashing the urge to pretend indifference to regain her sense of control. Temporarily, at least; she is what she is, and much of what she is is an alley cat in the shape of a woman. She strokes a hand gently along his spine, down and back up.

"Make it worth my while, and maybe I'll teach you," she says. "At least the interesting curses."

She's an alley cat and he's a beaten dog. What a pair they make. He hums a little, then shifts his head up enough to press his mouth once into her neck, instead. "Probably could come up with something," he says against the skin.

Maybe not sex... right now. He doesn't have the energy, and he feels too raw after the crying jab, but it's a thought. They've got a few days for experimenting, and the bath was just the first one. But a kiss, a promise, that he can do.

She makes a small, pleased sound in the back of her throat at the brush of his lips and his breath against her skin. That feels distractingly nice.

"Mmm. I look forward to seeing where your creativity takes you," she says. Her hand strokes along his spine again, then comes to a rest between his shoulder blades. "Later. You must be starving. Do you feel up to getting up for a bit, or shall I see what we have in the kitchen that's portable?"

"I should get up." He feels like he needs clothes, anyway, after all that. Something to hide in, at least for a little while. Things will probably come off again eventually, since he does like that noise she just made, but for now, clothing.

So he gives her neck one more kiss, then pushes back a little so he can sit up.

She lets him go, and shifts back, propping herself up on one arm again. "Take your time," she says. "I'll go see about food. And coffee."

The latter is, in her opinion, absolutely as essential as the former to regaining some sense of normalcy.

"Coffee," he repeats, with a tone both hopeful and reverent. Sure, coffee technically doesn't affect him anymore, but he still loves it, and the memory of it helping wake him up every morning is soothing. So he pushes back the blankets and climbs off the bad and onto his feet. Can't get coffee until he's dressed.

She said he had clothes in the wardrobe. He just has to get to it and pick something. It will be with far too vicious a satisfaction that he picks out exactly what he wants-- heavy and warm and in the opposite of tactical gear colors, today.

The corners of her mouth twitch faintly with amusement at that. "Well," she says, a hint of laughter - perhaps just a little relieved - colouring her voice. "At least you have your priorities straight."

She pushes herself up and swings off the bed, heading for the door and the kitchen beyond. By the time he emerges, there will be fresh coffee, and food cooking. (And, somewhere in that span of time, she's found a moment to change her tear-damp shirt; Sabetha is nothing if not fastidious.)

"Always," he agrees.

He takes the time to visit the bathroom, wash his face and teeth, and get two layers of socks and shirt on (just one set of pants; he's not that in need of covering up) before he gets out into the kitchen. He's also determined he is not even going to mention the crying jag. It never happened. It won't happen again. (It might, at some point, but he's going to pretend.)

What he is going to do is come up beside her and, making sure she knows he's there and won't be surprised, tucks an arm around her waist while she waits on whatever's cooking. "Any news while I was out?" He assumes she has some access to the outside world from here.

She leans back into him, letting her head tip back to rest against his shoulder.

"Attempted bioterror attack in Lagos," she says. "Probably a coincidence, the timing, but I've put out a few feelers. Nothing yet about a fire in the wilds of Russia, but that'll be below the fold news even after someone takes a pass over to make sure it won't spread to the forest."

This is nice. This he can do, slipping the other arm around her, too, hooking thumbs against the waistband of her pants. It feels comfortable, especially after the emotional overload of twenty minutes ago. "Probably nothing to do with us," he agrees. Then, voice a little harder, "And even if HYDRA knows what exactly happened yesterday, now. They won't want it very public. Too many questions to be asked."

He hopes she got some good data from their computers. He's going to be itching to blow shit up by the time it's safe to leave their safehouse.

"Mmm. I'm expecting a two-sentence mention of a derelict post-war facility catching fire due to lightning strike in a couple of days. Just to close the books for anyone who might've caught sight of the smoke on the horizon."

There's nothing she immediately needs to do with her hands, and so she lowers them to cover his, flesh and metal both.

"I should have everything I pulled from their system decrypted in a day or two. Doing it on an isolated machine takes longer, but we have the time."

And it's safer by far.

"Yes," he agrees. Both that they have time, and that he can see why it would take longer. He can be patient. For a few days, anyway. Having her leaning back against him is probably more of a balm than anything else he could think of.

He drops his cheek to her hair. "Will you come with me? After. I want to take down as many as we can find from that data." Anyone who knows the words. Everyone who knows how to make a Chair. And there's no one he'd want on his team for that but her.

"I'll come with you," she says. It's quiet, and more solemn than is her wont - a promise, for all that she doesn't give them often. "I'd rather not let you too far out of my sight for a little while."

And there's more data to steal, she's certain - more that she can comb through for ways to free him from that conditioning, or for the names of people who could be made to give up those answers.

It doesn't even occur to him that it could be undone. He'll just be happy taking out everyone who might know how to use it against him. This is why Sabetha is the brains of their little operation.

He smiles against her hair, just a small one, but it's there, and rubs his fingers over her hip bones. "Okay," he agrees. "I'm okay with that. Might have to stick pretty close whenever we can."

That draws a laugh from her, low and warm. "Mmm. Purely for practical reasons, of course."

The timer buzzes, and she reluctantly begins to straighten. "Before we start anything neither of us is quite equipped to finish right now, we probably should eat."

"Yes," he agrees, because if he hasn't eaten since that meal before the bath, his body definitely needs it. He lets her go in order to collect his coffee at last. "Hope you're making a lot. I don't think they fed me more than once a day, in there."

And it was back to the tube, which was humiliating and terrible in retrospect. Which... he should not think about right now, actually, with real food making the kitchen smell great. He is going to drink his coffee like an actual, real person who drinks and eats normally. Ugh.

She mutters something under her breath, which translates roughly to goatfuckers. "I might have to move up my supply run a little."

There is, as she begins ferrying things from kitchen to table, certainly a lot - strata and hash and fresh bread, and sliced melon and berries. She's clearly done at least some of the prep in advance, waiting for him to wake, and if it had been punctuated by frequent checks to make sure that he was all right and still there even before she'd taken up her post with her book, well. No one needs to know.

He helps, where he can, moving plates and pouring her fresh coffee, too, before sitting down to demolish what's on offer. Politely. Neatly. But still, demolishing.

And once she sits, he scoots his twice-socked foot over to rest against hers. "What all do we have here," he asks. "At the house." She has books, at least. Her computer. He knows he wants to occupy himself with her, and she seems the same, but he has no idea how much time that sort of thing... takes. He's pretty sure they can't do nothing but make time.

(Wow, that's an old one. Does anyone say that anymore?)

"Books," she says, smiling a little as she brushes the top of his foot with her own. "I have my computer isolated, but there's a spare laptop with nothing sensitive on it that has a connection - it's not great out here, but it's enough to keep an eye on any alerts. Some old movies."

That's as much her own preference as anything else - she was a fan of the classics long before they met.

"A few packs of playing cards - I promise some of them aren't marked. And a few odds and ends. I didn't have time to bring in anything too fancy, but there's room to roam, if you need it. No aerial traffic, and someone would need to know what they were looking for to aim a satellite this way."

All of which sound like good things. Maybe he'll recognize the movies, maybe he won't, it's always a crapshot with what will spark a memory-- and he thinks she'll know that.

The cards, though: "I'll know if they're marked," he warns, but with an edge of amusement rather than annoyance. "And I'm pretty sure I know how to play cards. The rules I know might be out-dated. Do they change the rules of card games after seventy years?"

"Care to wager on that?" she asks, pure teasing. "I've adopted a few new techniques - and the base rules for the games we'd both know are mostly the same. There are just a few dozen new variations, to mix things up a bit."

Edited 2023-03-11 21:22 (UTC)

"I know better than to ever bet against you," he says, pointing his fork at her briefly. "I'll lose every time. But you'll have to show me the variations. Of course. I'll probably lose there, too." But at least that kind of losing might be fun. (He's pretty sure he knows how to have fun, in here somewhere.) And won't result in actually losing anything.

She laughs at that, and if the subject is a little bent, her delight still seems genuine. "Who knows, maybe you'll already know some of them under other names. And you do have a decent poker face."

She reaches over to brush his hair back. It isn't an absent gesture - it's too new to be an absent gesture - but it's comfortable in its deliberateness.

He tilts his head into her touch. She makes it look so easy. And it feels nice. "Finally, a good use for not knowing what my face is doing half the time," he says, and he aims for dry, but comes up with distracted instead, because he kind of wants her to do that again.

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