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Light was still sinking behind the edges of the buildings, the idle hum of energy thrumming through New York City, commuters mingling with vagrant and addict alike in the streets of Brooklyn. A haven for the working class, or the un-gentrified, this part of the city sang and screamed, fought and cowered, all the chaos that humanity had to offer encapsulated in a handful of city blocks. The pulse tonight seemed to beat especially strong in O'Rourke's.
The small bar was packed, live musicians flooding the rich wood and low lighting with a tangle of fiddle and guitar strings. Festivities occasionally leaked out and into the streets between songs, woman laughing with whiskey on their tongues and men framing in their mirth with tobacco. It was the kind of glorious, ribald concentration of humans that bordered on joyous while flirting violence. It was only a matter of time until a fight broke out, and with this many in their cups already, the results could be disastrous.
*
A small bar, but it was still a bar. After all the mess in Harlem and her encounter with that Green Monster in the ruins of Central park that called itself 'Hulk' and didn't even flinch when she hit it? She needed a drink.
The blonde slipped into O'Rourkes, headed for the counter and digging into the pockets of the leather jacket that almost certainly didn't start life belonging to her by the look of it. The sound of laughter, live music? It was enough to help someone forget as much as the booze was. Close to the edge or not, it was a refuge from the world for the time being.
*
Tables had been pressed into the walls, the other patrons disinterested in sitting tonight while music echoed in this hall. In whirls of faded denim and work boot percussion, the dancers moved down the small floor in a lively jig. A pause as hands were brought together, a brisk clapping, and then once more motion overtook the laughing crowd.
The chaos seemed to birth the woman who allowed the other dancers to step back, emerging from the clapping hands and shouts of encouragement with a wildling energy splitting open her features in brilliant smile. The music's tempo accelerated, and with it, so did the feet of the sweat drenched secretary, her heels long abandoned under a table, the jacket tossed over the back of a bench seat.
As bare feet pirouetted faster and faster, riding the crescendo of the music unflinchingly, the dancer's eyes flashed gold. It was in such a state, Skali collided with the newest entry into O'Rourkes with all the force of an Asgardian diety. Whoops.
*
The collision might have seriously injured anyone. Anyone accept someone from Samantha's family carrying the 'Legacy' gene. The force of the diety coliding with the woman rather audible but only seeming to knock Sammy back a quarter of a step at most. Hell, someone hitting -her- at that speed was probably like tackling a brick wall! "Hey watch it!" she begins automaticly, turning from her position standing at the bar. Those blue eyes carrying the sort of anger that can only come from a long and frustrating day, she turns to face her expected interuptor and instead…finds the sight of a young woman she wasn't expecting. Blinking a moment, a moment more she clears her throat as her anger seems to have been quenched by suprise. "Watch where you're dancing, okay?"
*
Skali stares. Openly balks at this woman who should be flattened, limbs broken, maybe a neck snapped. It had been an accident, despite the wolf having few qualms with such wanton violence. The soft brown eyes blink, and Skali opens and closes her mouth a few times like a fish. That had- a pause as she realized and then her surprise gave way to a knowing smile - that had hurt.
It took a lot to hurt her.
Curving around the elbow of the stranger, she murmured gently "Oh my, yes, I'm sorry. Let me buy you a drink to apologize, dear."
Skali's nose flared as she sorted through the smell of souring, spilled beer and acrid tang of cigarette smoke, trying to puzzle out what she had just stumbled upon. As she joined the woman in trajectory towards the bar, she was too enraptured to notice that the musicians had not moved into their next set, and the folks outside were beginning to gather in groups, talking quicker and quicker until a woman let out a gasp and fainted.
Skali didn't notice any of that. She was too enraptured with whatever being fate had just presented to her.
*
It seems Skali wasn't about to out her in the middle of the bar, so that was a plus. It took a lot to hurt her, but the dangerous of being seen as a mutant around drunken humans weren't always physical. There's a moment of silence, blue eyes meeting brown for a moment before the blonde woman nods and turns herself back towards the bar. Had she noticed the force she'd been hit with enough to realise Skali wasn't quite all she appeared? Apparently not, but then her head seemed to be a little out of the game after everything that had happened.
Turning back to finally request the drink she'd been intending, instead she finds an empty space where the tender had been only moments before. What in the world?
It's only now that she starts to notice the crowds gather, the whispering and building panic that seems to have halted the joyous night. Had there been another attack? "What the hell is going on?"
*
Skali pauses in reaching around the bar to pour them both a drink out of the well whiskey, raising a brow as she turns with bottle in hand and purses her lips. Depositing two shot glasses on the smoothed surface, she filled them and held the unoccupied hand to her lips in a plea for quiet, her keen hearing sorting through the conversations. And as she did so, her eyes widened. She set down the bottle, upended her shot glass, and then refilled it.
"The king-"
Another pause, that wasn't right. Her nose wrinkled and she shuddered as the sudden keening rose from the streets, spreading into the bar, sorrow making her feel sick as it flooded the air.
"President. Kennedy. He was killed."
*
Ordinarily, Sammy might object to such an action of snatching the whiskey, but odds are she'll pay for it later. At least that's what the young woman tells herself. Lifting the glass towards her lips she blinks at Skali's little pause of listening, of all her powers super-senses weren't really her thing, aside from an occasional 'niggling feeling' anyway. The answer the brunette comes back with however makes her stop, lowering the drink just a little. "The Pre-…bullshit," she comments, a curse that wasn't usually the woman's think in most company slipping from her lips as she pushes to stand, starting to walk towards the crowd to hear for herself even with the shot still in her hand. "I mean, that's got to be wrong, right?"
*
Skali let the stranger take in the news, delivered on the tongues of hundreds, sorrow shared as car doors had opened and the radio blared out the solemn news. The television, neglected in the corner of the bar for the sake of the festivities this night, flickered into existence in a buzz of electrodes and black and white picture. While everyone talked, nobody said much of anything. The Asgardian refilled her glass, and took the moment to stretch out her awareness for those closest to her, those that shared her blood, those that she had extended her protections over.
"What a dishonorable and pointless way to go." The god finally proclaimed. Another shot. She didn't bother refilling her glass, the bottle now taken into possession as she turned to regard the entirety of the bar with a growl.
*
Samantha's drink? It slips from her hand, landing on the floor and shattering in a burst of glass and amber alcohol. She blinks, mouth open wordless as it hits her. Her family had always been religious in their devotion to their country, indeed her gender was the only reason she wasn't fighting on the frontlines this very moment, but the last time a member of the Colt family, 'Legacy' had witnessed a day of a presidential assassination? It was Abe Lincoln. Silent, shocked, it was only as Skali's voice slipped between the panic and conclusion-jumping of the crowd that she turned back towards the bar counter, intent on reclaiming the seat she'd departed.
Ordinarily polite, her hand comes up to practically snatch that bottle from the wolf-god, intending for a swig of her own before she exhales and offers it back. "Who? Why?" she asks the questions likely mirrored by much of the world. She'd had no reason to be in dallas, no cause for being there, but even so there comes the inevitable whisper in the back of her mind: what if?
*
There was no effort to possess the bottle, having stolen it herself from the bar's wares. The keep was gathered around the television, leaving the two outsiders watching other humans absorb the news that their short, mortal lives were forever changed. Skali had seen empires rise and fall, kings and emperors killed by their own men through knife, poison, or their own people. Perhaps it was the means of death or maybe the pointlessness that the seemingly ageless being struggled to swallow. Either way, she reached for the bottle and took another swig.
"The same reason humans do anything. Fear."
The voice she offered this weak explanation in was matured past the years her skin bore; a hand rising to massage the thick curls on top of her head as she exhaled slowly. "They're already trying to blame someone. Anyone. This may get bad."
*
"It will, how can it not?" Samantha exhales, reaching again in what looks like will become a one-for-one of drinking. Taking her swig, the blonde lowers the bottle with a light thud. "Even if they catch someone, they'll dig or they'll lie and blame it. Maybe it's some nutter or maybe it's some comunist assassin. Who knows? It probably won't matter." Reaching a hand up to smooth some more rebellious blonde locks that had fallen from her ponytail she looks down at the bar's surface. "My father, I wonder if he knows…he'll take it badly."
Looking back towards the woman, things finally seem to click, Sammy's brain starting to catch the little ticks and clues. "Humans? As opposed to…?" she leads. Maybe she thinks the woman is another mutant, but she'd yet to knowingly meet an Asgardian.
*
"It will be whoever they want it to be. Whatever fits the designs of the times. Truth doesn't trickle down like the consequences of it do."
Skali wasn't keeping track of the bottle, instead applying check marks to the treasured few that she cared for. Safe, for now, though the wolf feared that may change soon. The tang of unease was swallowed down, the tightness in her chest loosening under the influence of whiskey and will power. A casual glance was spared sidelong at her newest drinking companion. She seemed to weigh her for a moment, before smiling in this moment of national mourning. The humor was honest.
"Call me Skali."
*
Skali's words earn a nod, it's clearly a sentiment the blonde agrees with, but it also means her job and quite a few other things were about to get a hell of a lot harder. "Samantha," she offers in returned introduction, taking another sip of the whiskey before passing it back out of habit and perhaps a small little bit of self-preservation. It was hard for her to get drunk, but she was almost certainly going to try tonight. "My friends call me Sammy." More words? They still seem rather difficult, but like many she's simply at a loss for the event that seemed so much more impossible then her meetings with aliens or battle with the Hulk's rampage.
*
Skali was in no hurry to break the silence, understanding that sometimes words did not fill the gulfs of emptiness moments of the nonsensical opened. It wasn't until the bottle was down to its last few swigs did Skali stand, landing on her bare feet.
"Samantha-"
She used the full name then, even as she stooped to peel on her heels, shouldering her jacket back over slender frame before looking to the door and then back at the woman,
"Be safe."
The intent to depart was evident, and yet she wavered, as if needing confirmation that the woman would listen to her request.
*
Silence broken, Samantha looks up at Skali, unspoken understanding of the world-changing event passing between them as she nods her head. She'd depart soon, find secluded space and then fly inter-state as fast as she could to check on her family, but for now? She just needed a moment. Giving a little grim smile of her own she nods at the woman.
"You too Skali, I'm sorry you didn't get to finish that dance."