on mun's renewed inspiration

[verybritish]

Must I be subject to your nostalgic whims? We had our time together. We agreed we were done. I was happily retired from your roster.

You can't expect anyone else to indulge you in this. You said yourself, you've traded up to the latest model of "Whedon ice queen". Why bother calling in a General when you have the Cavalry?

[To be absolutely fair, it's the direction Agents of SHIELD is taking that's brought this on: the damaged genius and the memories rewritten.]

I'm the patron saint of loneliness. I make you uncomfortable. You don't miss me.

Comments

blame, credit. credit, blame. :D

[verybritish]

You'd find a place among them, Mr Dominic, with a great deal more ease. A spy among spies. I doubt whether I'd be a good fit for a discredited intelligence agency. [So she says, but they can't pretend she's never how high-ed to someone's orders to jump.] My place is in the private sector, or what continues to pass for it.

[Buying expensive shoes while she can, even though the other side of her has seen and lived through what's to come.]

Besides, I still seem to be making offers.

I was just about to ask how you've been. Now I wonder whether retired isn't a sufficient answer. [Retired is more of an answer than she likely deserves, considering it's a personal question.]

[mr_dominic]

For every Agent May, there's a Nicholas Fury, and while I'm not about to compare the House to a global threat assessment organization, you did have to run a house full of potential crazies and ninjas, balancing science gone wrong with an urge to do some good. So I doubt a discredited intelligence agency is worse than a discredited morally bankrupt company that initiates the apocalypse.

[As for a spy among spies, the real kicker is who would rather have him on their side, Shield or Hydra? Given his history, he could always pull a Bobbi Morse. And Shield does have a habit of taking in misfit toys. Hell, Topher could be their shiny new codemonkey, and Echo their new kickass agent with a spotty history.]

So let's just say it's been a while since I've really stretched my legs beyond the extremely infrequent poking my head out to quip at someone. And even then... [It's just been a while.]

You know you can ask whatever you want. So long as we understand that I haven't been under any obligation to give you a reply, or an honest one, in a damn long time, ma'am. [But he'll still call her ma'am. Whether that's reflex, respect, irony, or sarcasm is up to her to deduce.]

[verybritish]

You make me sound very capable. [Her eyebrows raise at precisely the same time her mouth curves into a quick smile. It's the pleasant surprise reaction she reserves for something that isn't truly a surprise.] More credit to your observation skills.

I never said that it would be worse than the House. You might be satisfied to learn that I call nothing worse, at this stage.

[They should be past barbs about her naivety and his 'I told you so,' but if he has the itch, she'll tolerate it once for old times' sake.]

Leaving aside questionable hair and sexual orientation, I could replace Victoria Hand in a style SHIELD wouldn't soon forget.

[Never call her unwilling to indulge other people's ideas. Never say she doesn't abide his suggestions in particular. It's still her decision and hers alone.

Laurence Dominic would be a superb undercover agent for either side. Who could be more prepared for the heavy consequences of being found out? She's morbidly fascinated to know whether anyone could do worse than she did. It isn't a kind thought. Happily, it also isn't around for long.]

No need for reminders. I understand perfectly that we owe each other nothing.

[He says ma'am, and the formality is both foreign and familiar. Does he know? When she left off, some of the former Actives were venturing the occasional Addie and she was lapsing into darling here and there, not only with Topher. She does try to decide how he means it, briefly, but it could be more than one of the listed possibilities. She doesn't need to know. He might not know, himself. She hopes not. The things people do with no understanding of why they do them, those are her favorites.]

[mr_dominic]

[The 'told you so's are left where they should be, in the past. It's a conversation they've had how many times before, when it still mattered, when it was still that fresh. The jabs, the pains between them might always exist. Difficult, he knows, to forgive someone who deceived them for so many years. And just as difficult for him to forgive the woman who sent him to a fate far worse than death more than once.

Neither are clean or perfect or selfless. They are bitter and sarcastic beings, with agendas, with grudges, with the play they act around each other. Sometimes he throws the script away for the sake of indulging his anger, or for the sake of trying to surprise her, or even because he's tired of the old routine.

Maybe if he turned into a wolf, she'd at least briefly look startled, for a change of pace.]

What, you didn't dig the hair? I think I can appreciate the stripes. Gave her a little flair to ease the stern look. I'm not saying you need that. You can look soft if you try.

[Hydra would appreciate their capacity for cruelty, and Shield their skills in leadership, decisionmaking, spying and lying. The ability to do some good, however morally bankrupt the methods. She leads. He keeps people safe. What a team on their own. Maybe he's allowing nostalgia to get to him.]

Do you ever miss the idea of being sent somewhere where the slate is clean, or at least partially washed off, and you can start again?

[verybritish]

[Certainly, he could startle her. It isn't outside the realm of possibility that he could give her a heart attack. At one time, she did have her share of exposure to the supernatural and the otherworldly, she just doesn't expect that from him. They've both changed immensely, and while she's aware of that, she doesn't think he's undergone a transformation. What she feels is the old sense of coordination and synchronicity. Boyd simply wasn't in step with her, for reasons now grotesquely obvious.

Dominic was never the voice of her conscience, as he ought to know, but at least it wasn't unhinged curiosity that motivated him to watch her. He didn't just want to know whether she could drag herself back from the abyss. She values that with the clarity of hindsight.

Neither of them play by the rules. They'd both cheat in order to win, but when Adelle steps outside the bounds, she does it as quietly as her illegal move allows. A bloody wolf would be like overturning the board, or tearing up the cards. She'd resent it. She'd probably resent him ascending or descending to any playing field she couldn't meet him on.

Assuming the shock didn't kill her, the game they'd be left with would involve her borrowing a tennis ball from Topher.]

I think I'd find an unnatural colour sartorially limiting. Thank you for your opinion, Mr Dominic. [She closes her eyes a moment and presses her lips into a severe line, to thoroughly not appreciate it.] Of course I can look soft if I try. I can be soft without trying.

[Is it so hard to believe that she might have other modes? Regardless, it matters fantastically little, and she moves on without sighing. Starting again is what she condemned herself to. She's been judge, jury and executioner for people other than him.

That isn't his meaning and she knows it.]

I'll allow that the idea still has an appeal. It appeals when taken alone, hopeful and fresh and without the tarnish of the necessary compromises and physical demands of making it happen. You and I have a somewhat unique perspective on what a clean slate means. If a clean slate is atonement, then I've come to understand that it's best achieved with full knowledge of everything that came before.

[Her answer sounds a little incomplete. She deflects.]

And yourself? Do you have the stamina to start again?

[mr_dominic]

[He has stories, stories that sound impossible and fantastic and horrifying. The lycanthropy was one of the better things to happen to him, actually. But he's not interested in digging his own grave on the things that have happened before, in the past. Despite any rereading and all night nostalgia the typist may have been engaged in.

Her softness has never been up for debate. Like May, (or May like Adelle) she has her professional mask to keep a standard. But suggesting that her default state she fights against might be softness sounds too presumptuous, too close. Too familiar. But they're allowed to be familiar. He's not her guard dog on a chain leash, after all.]

For what it's worth, I'm glad a clean slate in this case doesn't involve being wiped.

[That isn't worth very much, but it's worth something. He sees her deflection, frowns at it, but doesn't call her on it otherwise. That they're both aware is enough.] The thought is there. Let's be honest, in the end, it isn't up to me. I could start again, fresh, from a point where things went to hell. I could start full of memories I had of the city. I could start differently--as someone who wasn't a mole, as a Doll, as a handler. A lot of possibilities. It's being considered.

I could go. I could stay in the box. So long as I still exist--dying I have no problem with. Being forgotten wouldn't sit so well.