all aboard the ss blamless

[pyroelectric]

Who: Crew of the SS Blameless and visitors.
Broadcast: Nope
Action: SS Blameless
When: March, or until we feel like a new one.

[It's a mingle! Get out of the car!

Unique ship notes for new crew and visitors: giant, unmissable scorch marks currently line the walls of several corridors leading from the cargo hold to the bridge!

Also, thanks to Kate, we now have a SWEARS AND ATTITUDES JAR displayed prominently in the kitchen. Whenever someone's being naughty instead of nice, they're compelled to deposit a few credits (or at least an iou) into the awaiting jar.

Also also, we are all still bunking together. HAVE FUN.]

Comments

[revivo]

"Sharpshooter," she says, sounds impressed. "You're a woman of many talents, Kate Bishop."

Sara can appreciate the sentiment; she's been wondering, herself, how she's going to stay in shape with all the flying through space they're going to be doing.

[ladybro]

"You may not know this, but there's a wide wide world of archery competitions out there. Amateur. Collegiate. I don't wanna lose my edge just 'cause I'm here."

A harmless white lie, right?

[revivo]

An archer. She can't help the way a smile curls her lips, unbidden.

"Good for you. And you're right, I didn't know. I was more of a football girl in college."

[ladybro]

Her eyes drop down to her work. Scratch-scratch-ring. Metal on metal. But Kate hadn't lost interest in the conversation; instead, she weighed her next words most carefully.

"Funny," she exhaled, "I didn't realize football was a scarring sport."

Yeah. She'd seen them.

[revivo]

How could she not? The Blameless isn't a big ship, and they don't have the luxury of separate bedrooms. There are any of a number of times Kate might've seen them. Sharpshooter; sharp-eyed, same as Ollie, same as Nyssa.

She cants her head deliberately, straightens her spine. Keeps her eyes on Kate as much as Kate watches her work.

"You'd be surprised," she says, casual. "Lot of people would do anything to win."

[ladybro]

Her nostrils flared -- but only so much as needed to let loose a second sharp breath. Almost a sigh. Nearly a laugh. Kate could conceptualize a lot of things...and, yeah, too-rough roughhousing on the field was absolutely one of those things. But!

"Isn't that what the armour's for?"

[revivo]

She raises her eyebrows, lets them drop.

"Didn't say I was talking about football."

[ladybro]

Well! That successfully goaded her attention. Kate's busy-work paused once again, and she rested her elbows on her knees. Watched Sara in silence until she could no longer handle not knowing.

"No. You didn't. So -- what kinda winning were you talking about?"

[revivo]

What Sara should do is find a better way to deflect. Members of the League of Assassins are taught how to go undercover when need be, gain information on targets of interest to Ra's al Ghul. In theory, they can blend in for weeks, months, years unnoticed.

But there aren't a lot of ways to explain what Kate's seen, and she's already given Leia something that could be expanded on: I come from a rough place. Different worlds. And anyone who does know about Starling wouldn't refute that, least of all after the Undertaking.

"The kind where you get to live."

[ladybro]

Many possibilities flipped through her thoughts. Gang stuff, maybe. Or domestic violence. Hell, maybe it was more of an underground MMA sorta deal. But Kate had her own experiences just trying to stay alive, and her first guess was more like a hope: a desire to talk to someone else who does what she does.

"You fight the good fight?" Kate asked. She put it out there -- no soft wind-up.

[revivo]

There's something about the way Kate asks that makes her wonder. Kate didn't ask if she's a cop, or military, or anything like that; though any of it could be called fighting the good fight. Maybe Starling isn't the only city with masks.

Does she fight the good fight? She's tried to. Laurel and her father seem to think so.

"I didn't get those fighting the good fight," she says, and it's true. She's not ashamed of her scars, but they mark her for what she is; and that's not a conversation she's ready to have with any of the people here, no matter how capable or likable they may be.

So much for sleeping. She pulls herself free from her blanket, forgoing the perfunctory ladder to slide down to the ground herself (top bunk -- vantage points, and all).

[ladybro]

"No?"

She couldn't stem her curiousity. Not even if she tried -- not even if she wanted to. Thing was, she didn't want to stem anything. Kate felt the questions bubble beneath her tongue. It was only a matter of sorting out what she wanted to ask first.

Bored with her make-busy work, she set the butter knives aside. Although she didn't leap down like Sara did, she did at least lean forward. Her feet sway in the air.

"Look, I'm not here to judge," her mouth felt dry. "But it's fair to ask -- right? To know who we're sharing a ship with." Kate nodded, as though convincing herself. "What happened?"

[revivo]

That was meant to be a dismissal. But, she reflects as she pulls on a light sweater (newly purchased), Kate doesn't seem like the kind of creature to be put off by dismissals.

"You can ask," she says briskly. That doesn't mean I'll answer seems obvious enough not to say.

She could go on, but anything she can think of dies on her tongue. They're all to the effect of If you're worried about having two violent security officers -- Kate wouldn't be wrong.

[ladybro]

She leaned into the bunk's edge. Indeed, Kate wasn't so easily dismissed. But she wasn't merely placing demands on Sara, either. So fair was fair:

"Cards on the table. Me? I'm basically an Avenger." Kate sighed, as though saying it was something of a feat. It made her jittery. Proud and nervous all at once. "Which I realize doesn't mean a lot to everyone who finds themselves floating along in these tin cans but -- hey, sorting out those world-differences is always a good place to start. Right?"

This was two-fold. First, she led with a truth about herself. Second, if Sara was from any world reassembling Kate's, then she would doubtless recognize what the Avengers were. What they stood for. And why, indeed, Kate had been asking about any kind of fight at all.

[revivo]

Sara turns to face her, folds her arms over her chest.

Point one for Kate: she's stopped moving as though to leave.

"An Avenger," she says, flat. "Can't say that rings a bell."

But she can guess. A team of vigilantes, of masks that step up when other law enforcement can't or don't. Fighting the good fight. Doing what needs to be done; being heroes. She has trouble imagining that, and then she doesn't; doesn't Oliver have a team in Dig and Felicity? Roy? Didn't she join them for months? They weren't big on names, but if they were...

[ladybro]

"...The big hairy guy is one, too." Kate wouldn't say Wolverine. Mostly because Wolverine hasn't been calling himself Wolverine, and because she didn't trust herself to call him Logan. When did she ever have the right? "Well. Okay, not big-big. Because he's kind of short. But...big-like-strong. With the hair."

She gestured loosely towards both sides of her head, imitating Logan's distinctively wild hairstyle.

"He's been an Avenger for, like, ever."

[revivo]

"You mean Logan?"

She raises her eyebrows at that description. She follows who Kate means, of course, especially with the gesture mimicking his hairstyle. It'd be funnier if not for the current topic of conversation.

"Funny, he never mentioned that."

But there's no doubt in her voice. She's sure Kate's telling the truth; she just has to wonder why Logan hadn't. Then again, most people wouldn't open with admitting to be a vigilante.

[ladybro]

"He wears a lot of different hats. So to speak. That just happens to be the one we share."

Sorta. Look, it wasn't as though she was speaking a total lie. Captain America did invite her onto the team in a general capacity, although she didn't fill out the more select team roster like others did. And she was even less likely to be brought along than Clint was. But she'd been a Young Avenger. And that had to count for something.

[revivo]

That's...interesting, another fact about her crew to file away for the future. Sara, in any case, knows this game; Kate's laid her cards on the table, and now she expects Sara to do the same. In some measure, at least.

Her mouth sets into a not-quite-frown, and she speaks slowly, carefully.

"There was a siege on my city." A truth, if a misleading one. "An army of men in masks, with inhuman strength and power. They didn't have any demands. All they wanted was chaos. Death and destruction for the sake of it. Anyone they found, they killed, and anything they found, they burned."

Would things have been different if they had an Avengers in their world? Maybe. But she would've still made the choices she did.

"They weren't in their right minds," she admits with some deliberation. That doesn't excuse what they did, what Slade did. "But letting them rampage wasn't an option. They wouldn't have stopped until every last person was dead."

She'd taken Oliver's lead, used the cure as much as possible. But that wasn't her natural inclination, nor what she would've done without his insistence.

[ladybro]

"Sounds like the good fight to me, even if that's not how you got your scars."

Kate was satisfied with Sara's answer. Perhaps she'd poked enough, or perhaps it was adequate to know the woman had thrown herself into a fray worth having. It was about doing good not being good. And that wide and varied spectrum didn't always have the easiest lines to colour inside.