Logs:Apprisal

Apprisal
Dramatis Personae Fury, Lucien
In Absentia Jax, Tony, Rocket, Erik	2024-10-17 "I'd like a word with you."
Location <NYC> S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ - Times Square
From the outside it could be just another office building obliquely overlooking the world-famous plaza. The signage in the lobby gives a directory of the obscure and prosaic businesses that have their offices there, but mysteriously none of them will take visitors who do not have appointments. All day long, people in sober business and work wear come and go, both through the front entrance and the highly secured private garage. Even inside, past the cover and the security high tech and low, it still looks like an office building. Only a select few locations -- labs and training spaces and most notably the immense command and control center -- betray the true nature of the organization operating here. SHIELD has been quite a flurry this week, fielding an exponentially increased volume of reports (mostly fake, but many buried within unfortunately all too real) about alien sightings and alien dangers. Lucien has correspondingly been quite busy as well, with a wide range of global hysterias to attempt to nip in their buds. He's been only very infrequently in the building but his dutiful reports have been prompt in Fury's inbox daily. Today he is here, though, bland and unobtrusive in his neat grey suit. He's stopped briefly in for a meeting with the PR team before, somewhat out of his regular habit, dropping by the R&D lab. He's been in there only a short while, but long enough to have stoked FitzSimmons into an eager delight (not that it is a hard task) with the delivery of -- -- well, he's not quite sure what it is, squat and lumpy and pulsing with odd energy, but. Figuring that out is what the nerds are for. "-- discovered somewhat unfortunately its impact local wildlife," he's telling the nerd team, "and thought it best if you looked further into it. I'm not certain they can stop producing the things but perhaps you could figure out some way to, ah, if not neutralize the effects at least dispose of it safely." Fury's replies to Lucien's emails have been as curt and businesslike as usual, but the SHIELD director presently stalking in looks...well, about as cantankerous as usual, actually. His frown appears deeper at first glance, but it's as likely as not those are just new wrinkles on his grizzled brow. "Mister Tessier." This, too, is his usual greeting, studied in its neutrality. "I'd like a word with you." The brevity of his pause here suggests he hadn't really intended to pause, but caught it a little too late. "If you have a moment." FitzSimmons's excited overlapping chatter over their shiny new sample merges seamlessly into a simultaneous "ooh, are you --" when Fury enters, which diverges again into "-- in trouble?" and "-- gonna make up?" This is followed immediately by mutual recriminating glances and finally an awkward "we'll just be --" from one and "-- over there --" from another and "-- analyzing this" from both as they carry away their prize. Notably, though, not into the next room. "In my office," Fury adds, leveling a flat look at the retreating scientists before turning on his heel with the apparent expectation Lucien will follow. "I have had vanishingly few moments lately, but for you I might rummage up one or two." The glance Lucien shoots FitzSimmons is only lightly veiled in its amusement. He tips his head politely to the scientists, and drifts, quiet and sedate in Fury's turbulent wake. "Hold my calls," Fury instructs his secretary without breaking stride, and pivots smoothly as he steps into his office to close the door firmly behind Lucien. For a moment they're close enough to touch. For a moment he looks like he's going to do significantly more than just touch Lucien, but turns away with a will and goes to his sideboard instead. "Now, I recognize you been busy as a one-man legged man in an ass-kicking contest," he begins, pouring himself a generous measure of Scotch, "and we ain't exactly parted on the best of terms last we met." It's nothing even close to an apology, but there's a conciliatory air to the way he lifts the bottle and an eyebrow in Lucien's direction. "But I do still expect you to keep me apprised as to matters of planetary security." A faint flush has crept into Lucien's cheeks, his breath catching and his eyes lowering. He is very still as Fury shuts the door, and very still through the slow breath he lets out once the older man has turned away. The flush has faded by the time he inclines his head in quiet acceptance of the drink. He slips closer and does not take a seat, fingers trailing lightly along the glass top of Fury's desk as he lingers by the window. "Goodness, I imagined you had quite enough people here working at that task, non? My job description very distinctly does not include dealing with that type of information. I'm just here to keep at bay the types of questions that might interfere with the highly capable agents you do pay to apprise you of --" His eyes have lingered on the scaffolding still bristling around Stark Tower. "-- well." Fury takes a deep breath in a way that flags genuine annoyance, but then he lets it back out and just pours another whisky. He goes to Lucien and darts a quick considering glance at the coasters on his desk before offering out one of the glasses. "Ain't in your job description. I reckon I got to thinking we was --" He turns away and sweeps a proprietary gaze over the city arrayed below. "Well. Maybe we ain't what we was no more." There's an uncharacteristic ambivalence in this, his tone almost interrogative. "Ionno if you needed space or a break or some other kinda wishy-washy millennial relationship jargon." Lucien turns from the window. His fingers brush light against Fury's as he takes the glass; the gentle flutter, soft and soothing, that accompanies this fades very soon. "I think I did. Things were a bit of a mess, last time we..." He swallows, looks down at the desk and takes a mouthful of whisky. "Apologies, this is somewhat new to me. I did not know quite what to assume we still were, and then when Jackson went missing I had very little time to..." His words taper off into a pause that feels almost like he has something more to say. The something does not come, silence just pooling tense and uncertain between them. Fury's breath hitches softly at the contact, desire shivering through the apprehension that lies thick over his ever-present backdrop of stress and pain and exhaustion. "I knew you gone through some shit, and I oughta been more sensitive." He huffs a vaguely cynical laugh and takes a gulp of whisky. "You mighta put together by now that ain't my strong suit, but I coulda done better than...what I done." He runs his hand over his head. "Considering how profoundly and comprehensively I fucked things up with my own family, I shouldn't've gone blundering into yours, but when you went missing I --" He struggles for a moment to continue that sentence, but finally just shakes his head. "If you need time to...what do y'all call it now? Process?" He's clearly making an effort to curb his disdain for the idea. "I don't reckon I'm goin' nowhere." "It's been quite unusual, in my life. For someone to care enough to -- blunder. I could also have handled it with more aplomb." Lucien only now pulls his eyes back up from the desk. He's watching Fury steadily through his next smaller sip of whisky, and sounds perfectly guileless when he adds in afterthought: "-- and did you not get Stark's memos? I had the impression he was apprising you of --" He is rolling his wrist slowly, whisky swirling gently in the glass. "At least some percentage of the oddities we stumbled upon." "Blundering for the right reasons is still blundering. I can steer clear of your family if that'd be easier on you." Fury sounds uncertain here, almost diffident. Then seems faintly irritated at himself, and downs a good deal of whisky about it. "Well, can't entirely just yet, but going forward." He arches an eyebrow sidelong at Lucien. "His memos didn't say shit about the rest of the stumbling, or that he was doing it with you and, I assume, that goddamn space raccoon. He sure as hell didn't warn me them missing fre -- mutants was gon' crash into fucking Genosha of all places, on a goddamn spaceship full of aliens." "Rocket is quite a brilliant engineer, without his aid Jackson and the others would still be enslaved." The next small swallow of whisky Lucien takes doesn't entirely obscure his fleeting pinched expression. "I think there was a dearth of spaceship piloting experience between them. Genosha was an stroke of poor luck, and that drivel about Erik Lehnsherr more regrettable still. Though the truth of the ordeal is, unfortunately, even more outrageous. The Brood seem to have put this planet on a lot of radars, some more calamitous than others." He knocks back the rest of his drink, and sets the glass aside (on a coaster.) "-- the creatures who kidnapped them have technology that makes that invasion force look like cavemen just discovering the wheel." "That brilliant goddamn space raccoon," Fury corrects readily, with no reduction in bombast. "The hell do you mean enslaved?" He does not take Lucien's empty glass. He drains his own and brings the entire bottle back over to refill both, ranting all the while. "You tryna tell me it was a coincidence outta this whole wide godforsaken world they crashed into the capital city of a tiny-ass island where the Master of fucking Magnetism happened to be imprisoned, on the same day decided to bust his own goddamn self out." He does not sound incredulous so much as irked. "Aight, here's my leading theory. Your advanced space slavers heard tell of the great terrorist Jackson Holland taking down the Empire of Earth with a goddamn sword and decided they needed him to lead a space revolution against even more advanced space slavers. Since they can't tell mutants apart they snapped up a whole passel just for good measure and sent them into space battle." He drinks deep before continuing. "Now Holland, being an ornery so and so, scuttled their space revolution and negotiated a deal get him and his folk get sent home in exchange for a different mutant terrorist ain't none of him and his wanted anyhow, and the rest is all that 'bout a dearth of spaceship piloting experience." "I -- slavery is --" There's a very faint wrinkle troubling Lucien's brow. He looks long and steady at Fury. Then looks down at his own hand as he holds the glass out to refill. Then looks at Fury's hand. Though he decides against elaborating on the definition of enslavement, the worry lines remain lightly debossed in his face. "I do not believe in coincidence," is where he pivots. "The ship they destroyed on that beach was capable of a certain degree of attunement to those aboard it. I've no idea how extensively that attunement might interface with mutant abilities, but I think there are many ways that the vessel itself might have landed them on Genosha without any intention whatsoever on the part of its pilots. If it were, for example, seeking what its analysis suggested might be hospitable terrain, it could well have picked land with a high concentration of mutants as a likely spot. We're lucky enough it didn't crash into the Lower East Side." He turns his glass slowly between his fingertips. "Insofar as there was any revolution, I imagine it was simply Jackson and his compatriots freeing what other captives they could. The species that actually took them, I gather, did it purely for entertainment purposes. A passing fancy for some new reality television programming, they were quite taken with the flashy gladiatorial prospects mutants have." "Gladiatorial -- reality television --" Fury shakes his head and takes another swig. "Goddamn, here I was thinking white people throw that word around at the drop of a hat, but you meant 'enslavement'. The fuck is the species that took them called? And what do you know about them?" He studies Lucien, intent and thoughtful. "Holland just can't catch a fucking break. Take his liberation gig to a galaxy far, far away, then come back and get blamed for the wrong jailbreak." He strokes his beard, looking back out over the city again, eye narrowing slightly. "Now, I ain't got no sway in Genosha, but they are infamously good at controlling and detaining mutants. I play my cards right, Lensherr escaping from them strengthens the case I been making that SHIELD should handle mutant terrorism on that kinda scale. Which would put the investigation into Holland's alleged involvement in my hands." He tips his glass at Lucien. "Helping me play them cards is in your job description." "They called their planet Mojo World. I will send you what I know. I suspect it may not be the last we have heard of them." Lucien has been on the verge of taking another sip. His hand freezes, then lowers slow as he considers Fury's words. He takes a step closer to the older man, and clinks his glass light against Fury's. "I do still have a few tricks up my sleeve."