◉ Video + Action

[vagabond_code]

Who: Clint "a Hawkeye" Barton and yous guys
Broadcast: Fleet-wide
Action: Marsiva
When: This evening

[Clint begins his broadcast with his hearing aids in, but the result is a series of false starts where it’s obvious from the wincing and the head-turning that he’s dealing with some sort of loud or high-pitched feedback. It isn’t long before he ditches them - rips them off and pockets them - and starts over again. lips it is, then ]

Alright this isn’t going to be a big thing - I just want to put my face out there.

[And he pauses, counting out the seconds for whoever might be looking to take a look at their beep-machines and catch sight of him.]

Oh, and to whoever brought us here, nice ship. Also, you’ve got some balls, kidnapping someone who carries one of these in his wallet:

[Casually, meaningfully, accidentally, he produces a blockbuster membership card, with the printed name Clinton F. Barton and a signature. When he catches his mistake he tosses the card down out of frame and the camera catches him thumbing through the inside of his wallet. Following that, the sound of him mumbling:]

Futzing Avengers ID, never around when you… [He trails off. The feed doesn’t.]

[A little later, sitting wherever there’s a seat to be claimed aboard the Marsiva, he’ll be found picking cards out of his wallet and tossing them down onto a table. Reorganizing, dismissing some, yet the cards that he doesn’t tuck back into their leathery hideaway are all landing corner-to-corner in a perfect even pile.

A little later, you might catch him sprawled out and napping. Because he naps. He’s a napper.]

Comments

[mucked]

[ deep breath, pegs. if anyone's worth being honest to, then it's the men and women who are eventual-colleagues of captain america. ]

Agent Peggy Carter. [ even so, she doesn't enjoy telling this truth. ] Strategic Scientific Reserve. New York office. But since coming here, I've been informed the agency evolves into something else.

[vagabond_code]

So you're a scientist.

[From "reserve" he assumed "state-funded". From "strategic" he figured "military."]

Who makes guns.

[mucked]

No. I'm an agent. [ ... ] Who shoots guns.

[ she may dabble in science from time to time, but it's never been her forte. ]

[vagabond_code]

But for the good guys, right?

[She name-dropped Captain America, but that didn't have trade the same way with Clint. He'd known plenty of people who had worked with Steve and then gone on to do terrible things.]

[mucked]

That depends on who claims to be the good guys.

[vagabond_code]

[Except that it wasn't about claiming to be good. It was about the things that you did.]

Okay, forget that. Just don't be a bad-guy and we'll get along alright.

[mucked]

[ just don't be a bad guy. in theory, it ought to be relatively simple. but in practice? ]

I'm told the S.S.R. evolves into S.H.I.E.L.D. -- one day, somewhere between 1946 and twenty-whenever.

[ it's not assurance, so much as a good-will gesture. she can't prove she's 'good', but she can describe a credential much quicker than he can fail to find one in his wallet. ]

I imagine her trying to talk around the thing in her mouth and it's funny.

[vagabond_code]

[He'd have to mull that one over later. For now he'd already extended his olive branch, so Peggy throwing hers in put him on the back foot a little, with nowhere to go. Except, perhaps, the are-we-even-from-the-same-world game.]

S.H.I.E.L.D has its own share of shady characters, like any other organization. This guy tell you that?

[mucked]

[ peggy smiles. ]

He did. Most emphatically.

[vagabond_code]

Y'do get good insurance.

[He added, to even things out a bit.]

[mucked]

[ that's...a bizarre sort of thing to keep in one's focus. peggy frowns. ] At least some things improve with time, then.

[ not that this tidbit was particularly helpful. ]

[vagabond_code]

Agent Peggy.

[He said, as if prompting his own recall. He did this out of habit, because of course, he couldn't hear himself any more than he could hear her.]

I ain't heard of you. Not by that name anyway.

[All things considered, this fact would be more surprising if he'd heard of her organization.]

[mucked]

[ darkly: ] I take that with some small and cold measure of relief, actually.

[ although it does surprise her. most of the people with whom she spoke from that far-flung decade in the future seemed to know her name. so why doesn't he? perhaps, as avengers go, he's not top dog. ]

It's not always my idea of a good time: being recognized by people on a one-way street.

[vagabond_code]

It can't happen too often -- there's a lot of space out there.

[He wasn't fooling anyone though. Not Peggy, not himself. He was thinking about what might happen if someone recognized him as an enemy, who he knew as a friend. Or didn't know at all.]

[mucked]

If it's any consolation -- although I doubt it is -- I don't recognize you, either. It's your name that rang a bell.

[vagabond_code]

Clint Barton, or Hawkeye?

[Because there's more than one of those.]

[mucked]

Both. One following the other. In parentheses.

[ puzzle that one out, clint. ]

[vagabond_code]

[Clint Barton (Hawkeye). So he knows she read the name, whatever that was worth. It could have been the guy who clued her into the S.R.R / S.H.I.E.L.D connection that tipped her off, but why write his name down? He couldn't think of any good reason that didn't come as a product of too-much-speculation. Another option of course would be that she was one of the kidnappers, and that she had files on everyone. He still couldn't deny the possibility.]

So it was written down.

[For all he knew, maybe she'd slipped up in revealing that much.]

[mucked]

[ thank goodness this conversation has been locked down, or she wouldn't feel comfortable revealing this much. ] In a file -- about an incident in New York City. A bit of dimensional flotsam, I suspect.

[vagabond_code]

[A file then. He wonders how they got it. Hacked the S.H.I.E.L.D database maybe, or sent scouts down early. Either way, this dimension crap rang false.]

Good memory.

[mucked]

Not very. [ or, rather, her memory is excellent. but it's not why she sounds so confident within this conversation. ] You mentioned the Avengers. So of course I went back and looked at a file explicitly about the Avengers.

[vagabond_code]

Got files on anyone else?

[You some sort of file collecter, Pegs?]

[mucked]

Just the one. Sorry to disappoint.

[ perhaps he can read the sarcasm on her lips. ]