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Steve Rogers is on a mission. By the brisk pace he holds as he travels through the hallways of SHIELD HQ and the subtle set to his jaw, he means business. It's not that he's formidable by expression, but…perhaps resolute. Suited agents and professionally-dressed secretaries step to one side to allow him past. He wears the spangled suit, as if he's just returned from 'outside business'.
Into the science division he goes, eyes traveling even as he fights down a prickling sense of the heebie-jeebies. Plexiglass and copper wiring will never be the same. "Excuse me?" His voice is loud enough to carry, maybe even into the deeper labs and beyond any walls partitioning off experiments. And people. "I need to speak with someone."
Fitz was so tired of being cooped upin the lean room. He had his books and the inside of the 'cube' was surrounded with charcoal. At elast he got to take some of his research with him and had the keyboard to his computer inside the room. Hearing the man that punched Hitler over 200 times in the room Fitz looked up a bit surprised by thevisitation. There was a muffled ('Here. Over here.') And a *tap*tap*tap*tap* on teh clear glass before hitting the intercom on it. "'Allo? Over here." Yay company. Unexpected but it was breaking up teh stupid monotany.
Freezing in place, Steve's attention flickers about the room until he locates the source of the muted tapping as well as electronically-projected voice. His brows furrow even as he walks across the lab itself, his stride still purposeful, and finds himself before the…large…hamster tank? Human tank.
"Hello. Are you alright? …in there?" he asks, looking about the spare innards of the room itself. He glances over at the aluminum speaker, with its switches, and it occurs to him that his voice might also be muted, from this outer half. He depresses a button and speaks again, a slight lean to his stance as he observes the young man inside. "I asked if you were alright in there."
In a brilliant harmony of juxtapositions, Clint swaggers through the building, weaving peacefully around people in their cubes and boxes, eating a danish that he stole off of Adam-the-Analyst's desk when he passed. He's still chewing on it when he hits the far end of where they're holding Fitz, and with a bruise discoloring his cheek, dressed in jeans and a well-fitting orange shirt advertising Treme' New Orleans, Clint smirks to himself as he walks up behind Steve. He'd recognize dat ass in dat suit anywhere. Most people would, to be fair. "Man. I love the aquarium, don't you?" The archer says between bites, flashing Fitz a wink.
Fitz was still half in his tactical gear. His badge was on him and on the wall on the outside a chart hung there by the bio team. The young scientist looked relieved to see the Spangled Man and smiled responding in his pronounced brogue, "Yeaaaah, we're fine. ..um… I think. Mostly. Post-mission quarren…tine." His grey eyes squint and he sighed somewhat irked and accepting this lot in life not without complaint. "Grand. Just… grand. This payback for when I got to go on that smuggling mission to taste test cookies is that it?" His eyes weren't on Clint though, they were on that damn danish. He gave them a deadpan look and added, "Yeah it's very educational. Say, is Thea still stalking you because can you ask her if I'm clear to come out of this thing?"
Steve doesn't precisely jump when the archer shows up at his side, but he does give the man a remonstrative glare for the silent startling. For those quick of eye, he totally flinched. But wait…the Captain does a double-take, even as Fitz is explaining his take on things. And yet another side-long look that precedes a heating of the tips of his ears. He clears his throat and gathers his composure up, even as the embarrassing memory of asking Clint's wife out for drinks rises from its grave and dances around his eidetic memory in a macabre display.
"I'm not aware of any stalking, but that seems like a task for HR. I came to speak with someone who knows about genetics, cloning in particular." Steve gives Clint another glance, this one more measuring.
"Now why would I do a thing like that?" Clint responds, staring directly at Fitz through the glass as he takes another. Slow. Awesome. Delicious. Bite.
"Don't say her name too loud, Mittens. If you say it three times, she appears," Clint jokes in return and shrugs a burly shoulder. "But yeah. I'll ask her to swing through. Take some time to visit the live animal exhibit."
IF he notices the glanceswhich, yes, he doesClint seems to ignore them. Maybe that's just for the additional creeping factor. Who the heck strolls up and sidles up along a veritable stranger and starts small talk like that? "Nah, HR doesn't need to get involved. I visit the med bay enough that I can't afford to make enemies down there." Isn't that the truth. "Cloning. Thinking about mixing yourself up a bouncing baby you, Captain?"
Fitz sighed resentfully and. Just. Stared. He peered at him silently and finally he muttered with one pissy little finger on the intercom switch, "I swear, Barton, you're the worst." His eyes rolled patiently up then closed. Finally there was a nod of genuine gratitude as he pinched the bridge of his nose, "Thaaaaank you." Looking between them he considered this and offered, "I'm not in Bio but Assistant Director Fury's had me looking into some of the anomoly projects. There a quesiton we might be able to answer?"
Of course there's a disapproving moue on Steve's face as he watches the Taunting of the Danish. Clint executes it skillfully.
"No, I'm not interested in cloning myself. It's cloning someone else. How could it be done." He looks to Fitz now, brows deeply furrowed in what appears to be genuine concern. "What would it take to accomplish this. Does SHIELD have these resources? And yes, I will ask in Bio as well as speak with Assistant Director Fury as well as Director Carter about this matter, but I thought I would start here, with the people closest to the science itself."
"Maybe," Clint agrees around one of the final bites back to Fitz. "But I'm the best at being the worst, so there's that." No more on Thea, but if he says he'll do it, he will.
For now, Barton falls silent as he puts away the last of that danish and starts licking his fingers. Not quietly. His attention on the flass itself, watching the reflection of Steve in it while he explains. "Why the sudden interest?"
Fitz folded his arms thoughtfully and paced. He paused eyeing that little corner of the bagel, then the bowl of granola he wa sallotted. Back to the dainish and let it go. "Well," he began pacing thoughtfully, "Wel the technology that we have and ome of the samples we have received from self-replicatingcellular structures it's not… impossible. The question is why ever would you wnat to do it? THere's science for hte sake of science and then there's science that exists to upset the balance of nature May I ask why we're asking? And… no Barton before you ask, no you cannot volunteer just …in case." He looked back to Clint and then Steve concerned, "I can't say any sort of process in whole would be terribly safe."
Steve finds and meets Clint's eyes in that reflection, his expression dropping into a mask of formality.
"Because I'm not the weirdest thing around these days." Perhaps the answer is sufficient to Fitz's question as well, in regards to asking after this line of science. It's certainly not a lie, in any case. He listens and looks no more comfortable by the end of the brief explanation. His chin drops briefly. "I didn't think it would be safe at all," he murmurs, seemingly lost in thought for the moment. His gaze rises back up to Fitz, glancing at Clint's likeness found within the glass in passing. "You're saying that SHIELD has this capability? That they could accomplish it? Which?"
"If I want a copy, I'll make mine the old fashioned way," Clint asides seriously to Fitz, just because it's more amusing to be overtly serious. He listens closely, shoving his hand down into a pocket and elbows loose at his side. Expression all kinds of neutral, and it's damned hard to tell if he's exactly what he seems at face value, or nothing like it. Such is SHIELD eh?
Steve says he's not the weirdest thing out there any more and Clint chuffs a scoff, a corner of his mouth twitches. Yeah. No shit, Cap. "Does it matter? I mean, you sound like you've run into some boogie men, Cap, and now you're checking closets."
Fitz nodded solomnly to Clint. "You're a good man Clint. Still the worst, but a good man." Not forgen for the danish yet, and not entirely that serious." Looking back to Steve he considered offering in an expression of condolence,, finger on the intercom switch, "Well with all due respect, Sir, we've had to deal with Kree and Skrull this season and also a woman who sneezes and shoots quills. If you saw… waht we saw on the Ghana operation… you'd know I'm dead serious when I say I really, rallllly wish you were the weirest thing out there. At least we trust you an' from what I know, that was something you…asked to do." Cap wasn't the only one seeing ghosts lately.
"I'm interested in keeping up with the times, even if there are such a thing as boogie-men now," Steve replies to Clint, giving him a sidelong glance and a small smile. "A few decades in a freezer doesn't help." He can joke about it now, albeit wryly. It doesn't make it any less of a pain in the ass in the end for the Captain.
He looks to Fitz again, still wearing that mildly sardonic little thin-lipped expression. "I wish that I was too — and yes, I agreed to the experiment."
A likewise wry twist of Clint's mouth seems remarkably savy, but he says nothing to the effect.
His attention swims casually to Fitz, and Barton shrugs his shoulders, thumbing over one. "I can introduce you to a guy who can spit acid balls and makes a hell of a hoagie, Mittens. And he was born that way. So…yeah. Safe to say things are getting complicated. Sciencing included. Still. Not like anything like clones are going to be stamped 'Property of SHIELD' on their foreheads."
|ROLL| Fitz +rolls 1d20 for: 20
Fitz paced thoughtfully, "We looking to replicate a whole human being, and embriotic state, or are you looking to create some sort of vessel for cognative transferrence?" Sure, ask the scientist here. He was serious though. Still, he stopped and winced hanging his head. His hand went to the glass and he stopped himself. He was fighting to do it but he put the breaks on the science for a moment and asked concerned to the two senior agents, "Sir… is someone in trouble?"
Fitz is given a singularly solemn look from the super-soldier, standing there beyond the glass in the lab proper.
"That stands to be seen, agent," he replies quietly, with his fingertip depressing the button as to allow the contained young man to hear him. "I wish I could tell you more, but I need to know more myself. If only it were that easy, Agent Barton." He looks sidelong at Clint. "Did you run into these alien beings that he talked about?"
Speaking of clones, though this one is the original, the one and only, the warranty has definitely run out, there's James Barnes. He's in civilian clothes, not SHIELD agent gear…and he'sgot the look of a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. In other words, Buck's more or less expecting to be arrested, rather than greeted with open arms. He comes up beside Steve to peer at Fitz. "What'd you do to piss Directrix Carter off so bad she put you in the penalty box?" he asks, tone only mild, inquiring.
Clint listens to the exchange smoothly with the same relaxed air he's embodied. watching Steve's ghostly reflection in the glass, there's a mellow, "Well. One of 'em shape shifts, so, yeah, probably. There are so many of the rest running around, chances are yes, but none so much on a mission s'far as I tell." Clint's stance shifts back and forth slightly. "I'm more of an at home operative." Bullshit.
Bucky enters the space and Clint's eyes track his reflection in the glass as well, squinting slightly. "Looks like someone should be asking you the same thing, Barnes." Pivoting to one side, facing Barnes rather than Fitz, Clint thumbs back at the hamster. "It's a new exhibit from the zoo. We're holding on to it until it passes through customs. See the amazing irradiated Scottsman."
Fitz blinked at Agent Barnes returnend; grey-blue eyes wide. Hey he ahd nothing agianst him and was as worried as he was an happy to see he was alright dismayed at more zoo-exhitibit level jokes. "/?THUNK//" went Fitz's forehead against the glass. "Oy withthe exhibiiiiit…" He sighed. He couldn't eat the man's daniash out of spite as it was gone already and on that side of the glass so he took the free moment to bemoan his condition before giving the direct answer, "Mission in Ghana. Turns out there was a radiation leak. People being expieremented on. All rather messy. Can't say more than that until the debriefing is complete but it was… decidedly an unfortunate time in the annals of humanity's history." To say the least. He hesitated, "How… um… how're you?"
Focused as he is on the young scientist behind the glass, it isn't until the faint reflection of a familiar face shows that Steve realizes precisely who's taken up camp on his other side. He still doesn't clear the floor, but he does twitch and hiss something tersely-rude in Gaelic under his breath before briefly sliding his hand down his face.
"Barnes," he sighs, glancing over at the man. A quick quirk of a smirk grants the successful startling, but then he's back to his Very Serious Self, even as he asides to Clint, "— and if you're at home operative, I'll eat my pants." Which would be quite a feat.
Now that's the million dollar question, isn't it? Buck takes a deep breath, lets it out. "In a word? Weird," he says, heavily. He doesn't look good - pale and haggard, and drawn. As if he'd lost weight he really couldn't afford to have shed. "It's been a very long….." There's no good word for it. Expedition? Long-range disaster? International incident? "It's a long story," he settles on. AFter vanishing after stealing SHIELD prisoners, none of which seem to be there with him. Where'd all theclones go?
Clint makes a show of looking at Steve's pants. Leaning back. Considering. "How much fabric's really in those? Better question which intern has to paint them on you every day? Mittens," Barton looks at Fitz, face pushed against the glass. "Didn't I tell you I wanted to be told when painted on armor was being tested." For multiple reasons.
Bucky's haggard tale earns a glance in the reflective surface. "Sounds like you need a drink." Is he offering? Is that an offer? I mean, it sounds like one.
Fitz looked to Cap speaking his mother tongue and the scientist looked at Cap aghast, "Language!" The Scotsman sighed, "I swear, we share things with you and you just… abuse it." There were going to be new divits in teh bridge of his nose where his fingers steepeld regularly. Still, his eyes shifted from Bucky to Steve to BUCKY to Steve. He offered Cap, "I'll see what Bio knows, but I promise nothing. I'm an engineer and a particle physicist. Teleporting and manipulating matter isn't really creation of living matter." Looking to Barton he replied, "That Iwe have been perfecting. It goes on jsut fine but it's on… for a while" he paused and tried to find a tactful way to highlihght the fault. "Restroom breaks though might prove problematic." Paint on pants go on fine. Removing them? Not so much.
Fitz gets a long and pointed look before Steve replies, in fluid Gaelic,
«Son, I was speaking it at my mother's knee when you were a twinkle in your father's Kerry-green eyes. If anything, you're the one borrowing it.» Back to English now, as he glances over at Bucky for confirmation as to the painted-on pants. Painted…on…pants. It seems the young scientist is earnest, for all it seems ludicrous.
"I'll admit they're a bit tight at times, but I can still move in them. No tighter, however. And sewing the holes shut is a disaster sometimes." This much, he allows.
"There aren't enough drinks in the world," Buck says, with fervor. "Well, maybe at my other job. Boss has some strong stuff." Then Fitz scolds Steve, and that haggard, drawn look is momentarily lightened into something like his old puckish good humor. "I told you Irish was close enough to Scottish," he admonishes Steve, with a rill of laughter there. He slants a look at Steve and then at Clint, with one of those lips-pursed smiles. Yeah, he spent most of the war walking behind this guy, and it wasn't always for protection by the shield. No women in the field, you gotta take your joy where you can find it.
Clint's turn to rub a hand over one eye with all the wacky words flying around, and his own private humor over the painted on armored pants project. TM. Rubbing a hand through his hair, ruffling it back and forth, the archer exchanges knowing glances with Barnes, then whips a hand out to sock the brainwashed international assassin former army brat and special ops bro in the right shoulder. Probably not super smart. But it reads more like a companionable thwap than anything. "Well, come on then. I gotta stop by medical for Fitz, but, drinks. I'll buy."
Fitz squint to Captiain America, «"Are you seriously saying that to someone born and raised in the UK? This is… amusing."» Looking up he shrugged to Bucky, "Well Gaelic, Scots Gaelis and Welsh all share root etymology and I speak them all jes' fine. Russian, Armenian, Latin, Greek…" He slowed down realizing it wasn't actually an academic discussion. He sighed, "Nevermind. Clint?" He looked to Hawkeye and sighed; antsy and pleading, but looking immediately relieved when Clint beat him to it. "Thank you." He was at least 98.7 reliable to his word which Fitz appreciated. "really. I've had a screaming headache and I just… I jsut want this part to be over."