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The riots had raged for two days until things had calmed down, allowing Rogue- aka, 'Scarlett' and Bucky, aka 'Jack Frost' to leave Mutant Town. The farewells had been stilted and awkward, mostly because the raggedy veteran had no idea how to properly farewell a woman. "Be careful," he'd admonished her, and started walking east.
So it'd taken Rogue several days of looking to find him again. The homeless community has its own dialogues, own methods of tracking people and ensuring their wellbeing. A few discreet questions in shantytowns, a smile and a flower to the right two men, had directed Scarlett to a section of the wharf that was largely un-used due to changes in the tidal patterns around the bay. It was a popular haven for homeless folks.
One of the warehouses is closed off and despite the lack of industry in the area, machine sounds come from within. The main doors are locked shut but a side door provides access to the big storage warehouse. 'Jack' is inside, working on a motorcycle that's up on a heavy steel girder for accessibility.
*
Homeless people tend, as a rule, not to trust well-dressed college students bearing flowers. They do take a brighter view on someone volunteering their time, bumming cigarettes or joints, and doing some work to prove herself worthy. Not like a pretty girl can pretend to be on the streets without the streets testing that.
But she can manage all the same, cutting her way through side streets and disappearing into the dark, wicked heart of New York. Here the sun never shines, beat cops rarely bother, and the community patrols itself. A place familiar and not familiar, dangerous and eminently not so because anyone with a sense of danger about them looks over their shoulder twice when she ghosts by. She heads down towards the waterfront in dull clothes, things that would betray the floating and diaphanous tastes she normally has. But is anyone going to look twice at another kid in a black motorcycle jacket and jeans? Even if that loose t-shirt isn't doing anyone any favours.
Hands in her pockets, she slouches right out to the end of the pier and stares out over the water. A few turns give her bearings, rooftops considered. This isn't the sort of place to reveal a hand too early. Scarlett isn't prone to that, though she gives the lowest of the warehouses a look. Time to climb. If a gutter or railing presents itself, she uses it. Brick is fine, too, because at the end of the day it's all for show for her to get to a roof, and go sauntering over gravel and cinderblocks to see who is home. He might even hear her.
Itsy bitsy Scarlett went up the water spout. Out came Jack and wiped the Scarlett out…
*
The warehouse is meant to keep out pesky pedestrians, not someone with Scarlett's redoubtable intentions, so it takes her very little effort to scale the low fence and start climbing up the warehouse. Peeking in a low window confirms her hypothesis— it's indeed the man she knows as Frost inside, labouring away on a motorcycle.
He's wearing a tank-top instead of his knit undershirt, though, and when he turns to adjust something on the bike Scarlett gets an eyeful— his left arm is not just wearing a sleeve, it's a prosthetic. A fantastic, remarkable prosthetic, but visibly not his 'normal' limb. Plates slide and click as cables shift under them, but he seems to be able to use the arm almost as readily as his human hand. Given the fact he doesn't need many socket wrenches to work on the bike, it must be exceptionally strong, too. It seems he's got the warehouse to himself, and he's doing OK, because there's a fire-damaged van parked in the corner and a few crates that have been arraged into a desk, workbench, and even the frame to a bed where an old mattress has been moved into place.
He stops for a moment to light a cigarette, produced from a crumpled pack in his pants pocket, and then leans over the bike to test the tension on the drivetrain chain experimentally. So far, he hasn't noticed the redhead's surveillance.
*
A motorcycle, check. Details about that bike are devoured with the familiarity of a fellow rider who knows an Indian from a Triton, and might have some exciting things to say about the telescopic forking dual shock suspension on a Norton Atlas that couples beautifully with a featherbed frame for a very interesting ride. A Super Hawk? Pfft, Ducati any day.
The man has slightly different specifications and no manual thus discovered to tell her the particulars she needs if she's going to ride that particular vehicle into the sunset. Or anywhere else for that matter. So it stands that Scarlett enjoys the benefits of a light hour and hanging upside down into a window that she has no business being upside down in front of. At least her countless braids and variations thereof are hardly at issue, tucked away and pinned within an inch of their life.
It wouldn't do to be Rapunzel, and Jack Frost tending to pull her down by her scalp.
This proves different entirely from the man in a model apartment adjacent to Midtown. Her mouth rounds slightly and she bellies back up over the ridge of the roof, lying flat for a moment. Revelations come hard and fast, sometimes. Other times, they simply present themselves without smoking. Choice, then, has to follow. For a few minutes, she remains as is until it's clear her cover isn't broken. Just mosey up and startle him? Bad plan. Tumble backwards to the ground and run? Nope. Shout yoohoo? No.
She hums instead. Not a superlative singer, no, but she can carry a tune like most girls in this age can. A mournful tune from a radio.
*
A motorcycle, check. Details about that bike are devoured with the familiarity of a fellow rider who knows an Indian from a Triton, and might have some exciting things to say about the telescopic forking dual shock suspension on a Norton Atlas that couples beautifully with a featherbed frame for a very interesting ride. A Super Hawk? Pfft, Ducati any day.
The man has slightly different specifications and no manual thus discovered to tell her the particulars she needs if she's going to ride that particular vehicle into the sunset. Or anywhere else for that matter. So it stands that Scarlett enjoys the benefits of a light hour and hanging upside down into a window that she has no business being upside down in front of. At least her countless braids and variations thereof are hardly at issue, tucked away and pinned within an inch of their life.
It wouldn't do to be Rapunzel, and Jack Frost tending to pull her down by her scalp.
This proves different entirely from the man in a model apartment adjacent to Midtown. Her mouth rounds slightly and she bellies back up over the ridge of the roof, lying flat for a moment. Revelations come hard and fast, sometimes. Other times, they simply present themselves without smoking. Choice, then, has to follow. For a few minutes, she remains as is until it's clear her cover isn't broken. Just mosey up and startle him? Bad plan. Tumble backwards to the ground and run? Nope. Shout yoohoo? No.
She hums instead. Not a superlative singer, no, but she can carry a tune like most girls in this age can. A mournful tune from a radio.
*
Inside the shop, Jack scowls mightily at a stubborn bolt, clamping his hand around it. He makes an adjustment on his left forearm and turns his entire body at the hip, finally breaking the rust-welded bolt loose. He releases his fingers with another adjustment, wiggling the prosthetic experimentally, and then… he hears a soft singsong.
He looks up, guardedly, then looks around, coiling in under himself as he tries to track the source of the sounds. He touches the snub nosed revolver in his belt, then cranes his neck slowly upwards, looking at the elevated rooftop of one of the lower bay areas.
He jogs on quiet boot treads towards a ladder, scaling it swiftly with a *clink* of his steel hand on the rungs, and he lands on the same level as Rogue fairly quickly. With a quick, agile step he shuffles along a walkway and then puts a hand on the exterior door, priming himself.
He opens the door quickly, the revolver gripped in his hand, then balks when he realizes it's Scarlett singing her song. The revolver gets snatched back quickly out of view and he shoves it into his waistband, moving so the doorframe conceals his left arm from view.
"Scarlett," he says in those grating tonals. "What are you doing here? How long have you been on the roof?"
*
Wouldn't that be a homecoming to speak of: shooting the redhead seated on the edge of the warehouse, legs dangling over the edge in a pair of dark jeans and curb-stomping, shit-kicking boots revealed underneath. The heat of the day should make them impractical but then, no one here is likely mess entirely with someone who has steel-toed reinforcements and the necessary attitude to back up that threat. Her devil-may-care approach is probably mildly disturbing to anyone who knows the dreamy peacenik who apologizes to doors if she nudges them too hard. Sometimes.
The song still hovers in the air, a brief pause in the melody recovered as she remembers the next stage of the jazzy old tune. Her voice lilts in a croon until she comes to soem kind of natural break.
"Hadn't much thought about the time." She holds up her arm, showing the bare line of her wrist under the beaten leather jacket that gives a James Dean sort of cool, back when those things were cool. No watch. "Long enough to get a little lonely." Lonely isn't a codeword for bored, not by the suggestion of it.
She swings her feet, perilously close to going over the edge. "Nice digs you have. The view is incomparable, isn't it?" The tip of her head towards the slow, turbid water silting up in the inevitable processes of all rivers draws a line where he might need it.
*
Jack starts to move towards her, but realizes he's not remotely dressed for 'polite' company, the metal plates over his left arm shifting and clicking. He clears his throat and leans his collarbone against the door, trying to keep his shoulder and arm from view.
"It's not mine," he grunts at the redhead. When she looks out at the view, he stares at her, taking advantage of the opportunity to commit her fine, bohemian features and wind-tugged hair to memory.
"The view is… it's good," he agrees after a beat, realizing that her words are more question than idle statement. He shifts his feet back and forth, uncomfortably unsure of himself.
*
"Possession is nine-tenths of the law, isn't it? Right now you stand there, I sit here. Yours, then." Simplified logic boils down all the possibilities to something narrow enough to contain her statement as correct and not knock Jack off his perch. She largely faces away from him, the jacket covering most of the line of her back, but both hands rest on the edge of the rough stone weathered within an inch of its natural lifespan by winters come and spring storms gone.
Her hair is the most complex thing about the whole affair, a pair of plaits that run down to her neck and meet at the nape, converging back up, essentially forming a pair of copper labyrinths that won't give a convenient handhold to the average combatant. Not that the pins will hold if he were to try to rip them free of their moorings. They can just as easily hide under a slouchy knitted hat if she needs them to. Loose strands in the front frame her face, dancing on the wind, licking in a fiery halo.
Distractions are what they are. She keeps looking forward, swinging her heels slightly. "It is. Better than half of Brooklyn or Queens, anyways. Have you avoided any trouble with the police after we dodged the roadblocks?"
*
"Some," Jack says, his tone a bit guarded and wary. "Two hundred arrests reported by yesterday. They had checkpoints for a few hours until the city mayor shut them down."
He looks out over the ocean again, then back at Scarlett, considering her with the expression of a man unsure of his footing or how to respond to her words. The stocky fellow clears his throat, feet shifting again, wracking his brain.
And then he remains silent, eyes looking a bit haunted at the prolonged silence. Not wanting to tell her to go, but not sure how to ask her to stay.
*
A pause might lengthen out to purely uncomfortable. Water slaps against the shore and rolls around the doused pilings driven into the mucky bottom. Conjecture the reason for her silence and Winter might start to wander away, rather than face the possibilities.
"I know I have no right to invade your space right now, and this probably looks next to terrible," Scarlett says out of the blue. The restless swing of her heels halts, though she still draws circles with her left snub steel-encased toe. "After everything went wrong this week, something right had to happen. Being sure you were all right."
She could avoid apologies, an unrepentent sinner so high in her pride. Not this, tearing back a curtain and exposing a human frailty.
"Tell me to shove off and I will. A right to your privacy and all that, of course."
*
"No, you lo— it's… it's fine," Frost grunts, shaking his head. He presses his hand against the doorframe and looks over his shoulder, considering. "Come inside," he tells her, finally. "Give me … three minutes. I need to clean… some things."
He steps into the warehouse and slides down the ladder, metal scraping paint and rust, and he picks up a heavy overshirt to pull over his tanktop. The stocky fellow casts around and shuts the van doors, then puts a few grenades into a backpack and shoves the backpack into an empty bin.
He checks around once more for contraband, then clears his throat and calls up to the second floor 'balcony'. "Okay. Come in."
*
Leather and denim, smoke and wind and alpine flowers; those are her signatures, right down to the iron crunch of her boots and the faintest copper trace of fire at her throat. You lo—? That will remain a point of curiosity never voiced, and facing away, the raise of her eyebrows turned speculative will not reach anyone's eyes. The wind can chatter its lies upon the whispery gusts, betraying him to any with capacity to listening to aerial nattering and sift out sense. She has merely a guess of time.
Scarlett, though, is patient. Meditating upon the warehouse takes however long is necessary, modulating breath and stilling actions. Some kind of complicated asana might be suitable here, though she is neither disposed to worship the sky in a warrior stance or demonstrate the relative flexibility of a soft pretzel combined with a Chinese acrobat in a form better suited for a sun goddess of Celtic climes. In short, the calm of her breathing and bearing will serve against any little surprises. Maybe.
It helps not to know about the grenades, at least.
Her footfalls are light enough, though deliberately placed to indicate a descent. For that balcony, she takes two steps and forsakes the ladder. The girl simply jumps, showing a bravado not exactly evinced in the apartment but not the same as out. Both soles strike the landing and she drops into a crouch, palm on the floor, pushing herself back up. Frooooost! I'm coming! is precisely not the thing to say right now, and Lucille Ball is likely lost on him.
She barely glances around. Bold thing, or intensely stupid. The verdict is squarely in the latter camp, probably. Wherever Frost stands, she orients, not advancing until beckoned or sure it's welcome.
*
Jack's brows rise sharply when she drops an easy fifteen feet, surprised at her athleticism. "A good landing," he tells her, in a voice of approval. "Is that something you learned with your Yoga?" he asks, sounding genuinely curious. He absently tugs at the glove covering his left hand, making sure it covers his wrist to the edge of his shirtcuff.
He looks left and right, trying to think of the Right Thing to say next. "I.. don't have anywhere to sit," he apologizes, lamely. He gestures at the old mattress with a single rough blanket over it— it's at least clean looking. "I have water, if you are thirsty. Or some… vodka?" he offers, glancing at Rogue as if unsure if the proposition will offend her sensibilities.
*
The dip of her head acknowledges the truth of the matter. "My teacher decided if I was constantly seeking high and risky spots to hold positions, I better know how to land properly." Her mouth lifts in a very rare expression as far as Scarlett is concerned, a wry uplift of her lips that thins their contour but dimples her cheek artificially. "A different way to see the city. And also, it helps to avoid fear of falling when you can break it."
Or you can fly, but it's neither here nor there.
Rather than leave him at odds, she finds the nearest excuse for a railing or a ledge to perch on, planting herself there and leaning back or simply sitting. Any horizontal plane of reasonable access will do. Provided he doesn't wince or show any indication he does not welcome her choice; the girl isn't past claiming the mattress if necessary. "Are you all right?" The question lilts softly over that distance, retracted from any worse by the definitive upward curl of her voice.
Her fingers coil together, locking around her knee as she swings her sole back, pressed on the vertical to draw a sharp angle from her leg. "Bit of vodka might not be bad. It's after lunchtime."
*
"Yes, I'm…" He rubs his neck. "I'm not used to visitors." He watches her find a perch, then gestures at the mattress. "You can sit if you like. I'll find something to drink." He moves to an office space, the windows long since broken out and pokes around inside of what must have been a break room. A truely ancient icebox is still in there— he roots around in the ice and finds a bottle of vodka, and picks up two glasses from what must pass for his sink. They're clean at least, though the vodka is Midwestern corn-starch rotgut that could probably sanitize surgical tools.
He returns to where Rogue sits and pours two shots, one for each of them, and offers her a choice of glasses. He throws his back quite promptly and pours himself a second, and tops off Rogue's unless she takes an effort to stop him, all done without a second thought.
"It's not very good," he concedes. "But it's cheap."
*
Now or never, when Frost hands the pale-skinned girl the glass with the dubious liquor poured out. She gives a tentative sniff, perhaps indicative he is dealing with a dilettante rather than a hardcore drinker. Then again, every other indication might give the same impression.
A shrug of her shoulders indicates no hesitation. Raising her glass, Scarlett offers a wordless toast of a kind, and then she puts the rim to her lips. Tipping the vessel upwards until the liquid spills free in a clear, burning tide, it crests against her mouth and bubbles over the curved ramparts to inundate her tongue. A flicked curl draws a droplet to the roof of her mouth where it privately hangs suspended like a blazier chandelier imparting that wretched, scorching taste. More runs down the back of her throat, captured in a swallow uninterrupted by a breath until the last drops are taken. She blots her lips together, expression pinched by speculative thought. The second the burn kicks in in earnest, thumping her like a mule, her head shakes and throws a few loose locks waving upon the air.
"Cheap is better than nothing." Her voice is somehow not a croak, something she can be proud of. Topping off means staring down into the glistening abyss. "To good things without cost." Whatever those are. And the second finger is drowned as the first, in an art to bared throats and simmering appetites.
*
Frost drinks a lot more mechanically, and either he's secretly doing fast hands and pouring himself water, or he's a drinker on par with the staunchest of alcoholics. He throws the vodka back with two swift gulps, exhaling the cold burn into the air to soothe his throat after each shot.
He brushes his shirt cuff against his lips to dab away a stray trickle of vodka and sets the bottle aside with a stiffened motion of his left arm, though he doesn't recap it, and finds a box to sit on across from Rogue's perch. "I don't have much to offer here," he tells her, shoulders rolling forward into a lazy slouch. His voice is low, almost a mumble— weakly attempting to make conversation. "I've only been here a week. Trying to salvage some .. things. Make money." He glances at the last gasps of sunlight filtering through the uppermost windows, and moves to sawed-down iron barrel. He starts breaking up chunks of wood and throws them into the makeshift firepit, then pours a bit of vodka onto the wood as a makeshift accelerant before lighting up a twig with a pocket lighter and tossing it into the bin.
There's a *whumpf* of blue-burning vodka, and it rapidly turns orange as the dry old wood starts to take a flame, firelight spilling upwards to pour and catch on the walkway rails before puddling on the ceiling.
*
The greater mercy of a conversationalist raised to Vonnegut and the beatnik generation, to poets dead a hundred years and Sufi mystics ten centuries past that, is that odd silences are natural. Attempts can be read and met halfway by a girl too loquacious sometimes for her own good. Her lips form a bit of a quirk when Frost apologies for the lack, and lest he mistake her for mocking him, a wave of her hand dispels the notion. "You were unprepared for company." Scarlett rests the drink on her upper thigh. "As I said, I take the blame for dropping by unannounced."
Then, in an elegy of fire churning up within the barrel, what else can she do but applaud? Golden flame hits her and reveres her hair to an autumn wash, finding shadows and light in dim measure. Battered leather and denim don't give much for a shining surface, only her face and throat. "Money makes the city go 'round. I wish I had any suggestions on that front, but I don't."
Only a promise.
*
Where she embraces the flame, Jack shies away from it, standing back and dropping his head a little. The fire paints different lines on his features, almost making him appear to wear a tribal mask— his craggy brows leap up his forehead and the strong point of his jaw makes his mouth disappear in shadow.
"I don't need much," he says, after a few crackling seconds of staring. "Food. A bed. I ran out some local muggers. Now people leave me alone here." He seems to have claimed the warehouse by dint of possession, much as Scarlett had suggested.
There's another pregnant pause and he looks up at the woman, his expression visibly confused and troubled. "Why are you here?" he rasps at her. "Really? You don't owe me anything. You went to a lot of trouble to find me. Why?"
*
People leave him alone. Is Scarlett still a person? She most certainly invaded the place, and shows no sign of dashing off at his convenient. Her tongue flicks against her lips to leave a copper sheen artificially infused upon her visage. Folded fingers stroke the underside of her jawline, swept off on the underside of her pointed chin.
"I told you why. I wanted to be sure everything was all right for you." The lifted look brings her glittering eyes into focus, dark shadows framing them in such staggered lines. "The worst of the week seems to have passed but I couldn't be sure. Some responsibility lies on my shoulders to check in."
The troubled look arrests any further explanation, and her brows wing together subtly, plain enough. "Does it sound so unbelievable? I…" A beat. "I don't really know how else to explain."
*
Frost shakes his head. It's unclear if he's disagreeing with her premise or her statement, but he looks to be sincerely struggling with the concept that Scarlett might simply be checking up on him… because she cares.
He shifts from the fire and moves to the edge of the rough mattress, sitting down on it slowly and looking at the flames with a pensive expression. His silence would be heavy were it not for the quiet crack and hiss of the fire burning, the spicy tang of that combusting vodka giving way to the scent of well-seasoned pine turning into ash by inches. It's a bit of a chill, even late in summer, on the docks of New York, with the saltwater barely a block away, and the big and empty warehouse resounds with ancient echoes and steel sighing relief as the night allows it to cool.
*
Then they are quiet, bound together like a mourning angel in a graveyard and the thinker pondering the world's great mysteries. For silence cloaks them, an old friend and trusted ally, spilled together.
He might struggle. She holds her tongue and bides her time. Time will wait a little longer around the hissing snarl of the consumed wood, the present warmth enough to satisfy a need for a long vigil. Scarlett is in no rush.
*