[for Jessica] christmastime is here
Dec. 25th, 2011 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Christmas this year couldn't be any different than the last. I wake up alone, for one, still wearing the stuffy Victorian clothes I wore to attend mass the night before, and cold for having passed out over the blankets. The room isn't the one I oversaw being built, but rather a fancier version of the already swanky one I inherited from Tony when I moved into the mansion months back. Most importantly, I actually leave bed at a decent hour, because there's no one to entertain but myself, and I'm pretty lousy company.
I wish Tony and Pepper a Merry Christmas before I head out for the day; I mean, there's nothing really special about Christmas afternoon, right? No one's going to miss me if I prowl around the city for a couple hours in plainclothes, taking in the sights as I see them. Somehow, though, the path becomes familiar, my feet getting a memo that my brain didn't send when I get off the Underground a stop earlier than intended, and before too long, I find myself standing in front of the building that's replaced my old house. I've been here once before since the change, peeked inside to see the extent of the transformation.
It feels emptier than it did before my footsteps echoing against the empty walls. Habit has me starting a fire. Boredom has me thumbing through the pages of one of the books I left behind. A newspaper clipping of Gwen Stacy falls to the ground, and I remember why I kept it here. Crouching down, I pick up the paper, and stare down at the faded newsprint, smoothing it back into the front cover of the book. For a moment I'm lost in memories so old they seem worn around the edges, like a film strip, but I'm quickly brought back into the present when I hear something -- no, not something, someone -- hit the outside wall. I shut the book, sliding it back between the others on the shelf, and walk over to the window.
Jessica.
Color me surprised.
I knock against the glass to get her attention before disappearing to a window that'll actually open, standing aside once the job is done to let her in.
"Thought you were supposed to come through the chimney."
I wish Tony and Pepper a Merry Christmas before I head out for the day; I mean, there's nothing really special about Christmas afternoon, right? No one's going to miss me if I prowl around the city for a couple hours in plainclothes, taking in the sights as I see them. Somehow, though, the path becomes familiar, my feet getting a memo that my brain didn't send when I get off the Underground a stop earlier than intended, and before too long, I find myself standing in front of the building that's replaced my old house. I've been here once before since the change, peeked inside to see the extent of the transformation.
It feels emptier than it did before my footsteps echoing against the empty walls. Habit has me starting a fire. Boredom has me thumbing through the pages of one of the books I left behind. A newspaper clipping of Gwen Stacy falls to the ground, and I remember why I kept it here. Crouching down, I pick up the paper, and stare down at the faded newsprint, smoothing it back into the front cover of the book. For a moment I'm lost in memories so old they seem worn around the edges, like a film strip, but I'm quickly brought back into the present when I hear something -- no, not something, someone -- hit the outside wall. I shut the book, sliding it back between the others on the shelf, and walk over to the window.
Jessica.
Color me surprised.
I knock against the glass to get her attention before disappearing to a window that'll actually open, standing aside once the job is done to let her in.
"Thought you were supposed to come through the chimney."
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Date: 2011-12-31 11:39 pm (UTC)He's home, though, that's good. I wasn't sure about swinging by Casa Stark. I don't know if the walls would be electrified, in this pseudo-day and pseudo-age, but maybe steam would shoot at me out of pipes.
"I've had a little too much seasonal fare already today to fit," I say, holding the top of the windowframe and swinging myself in.
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Date: 2012-01-01 10:01 am (UTC)I wasn't being sarcastic before, when I said color me surprised. There aren't too many people who'd land on my wall, sure, but I am surprised to find her here at all, even if I had been tinkering with a gift for her before everything took a turn for the Victorian at the beginning of the month. Maybe she had a similar idea.
We have similar heads, after all.
"That why you're out and about?" I ask. "Gotta keep up your girlish figure?"
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Date: 2012-01-03 01:36 am (UTC)I wonder if he has any chestnuts.
"Good job. No, I've been doing the Spider-Claus thing. Except not in the costume for most of it, obviously."
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Date: 2012-01-03 08:11 am (UTC)"Though I personally prefer the term uniform. Lends an air of respectability to the whole thing, don'tcha think?"
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Date: 2012-01-04 08:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-05 09:12 am (UTC)"I could start my own organization at this point. Spider Inc."
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Date: 2012-01-06 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-09 10:14 am (UTC)I pause to look at her, hands stilling over the busywork. "Why are you here?"
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Date: 2012-01-16 09:04 am (UTC)His are older than mine, of course, har har, but that's just part of the all around oddity.
"Did you think I was going to let it slip by without stopping in to wish my clone from another zone a Merry Christmas?"
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Date: 2012-01-19 09:08 am (UTC)Maybe it shouldn't be at this point, but despite that it's fast approaching a year since she first fell into my life, we still haven't quite figured out how to act around each other, which is complicated by the fact that we fundamentally understand each other.
"I got you an IOU, by the way," I carry on, leaning back against a table once I set the kettle to boil. "It was supposed to be some upgrades for your suit, but I figured I'd wait to give you the real deal instead of some clockwork substitute."
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Date: 2012-01-21 01:47 am (UTC)Except not entirely. But I don't think I need to aspire to being completely incomprehensible to Peter. Being my own person doesn't have to mean being utterly opposite or thinking in an entirely alien way.
Although I am a girl which means that obviously I'm already from another planet, so that's convenient.
"I, uh, did get you something, hopefully it doesn't come off as... super creepy. It might. Maybe I should get you an IOU instead."
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Date: 2012-01-21 02:00 am (UTC)I'm surprised and I don't try to hide it, because without the mask, I'm annoyingly easy to read in this kind of situation. I don't know why it surprises me that she would've gotten me something -- super creepy or otherwise -- but up go my eyebrows, anyway, quickly followed by an interested sounding hum.
"Suuuper creepy is a chance I'm willing to take," I say after a second, and I hold my hands out in front of me, spaced out about a foot or so apart. "Is it bigger or smaller than a bread box?"
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Date: 2012-01-21 02:06 am (UTC)"What's red, in a jar- I don't know any good riddles about blood," I concede, taking out the little vial and shaking it.
I debated a bit, but the fact of the matter is, he's got years of scientific practice on me. I've had a look myself, and I know he's going to want to investigate it, so it kind of works out. My reluctance is understandable, though, I think. Bad things have happened from leaving this stuff in other people's hands.
I happened, for instance.
Also as a present it is as discussed a little freaky. Hopefully he gets the sentiment. I mean, if I can't trust him not to do awful things with it or lose it, who can I trust?
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Date: 2012-01-21 09:15 am (UTC)"That's--"
Well, it is what it is, isn't it? Blood. Presumably hers, which is a little Billy Bob Thorton/Angelina Jolie, I guess, but it's not like I'm gonna go around wearing the vial around my neck anytime soon, and it goes without saying we aren't ever gonna start dating, because that's a level of creepy I'm not willing to risk, ever, for a list of reasons that don't even bear thinking about. Hence the fast fade when she was trapped under the mistletoe a few weeks ago, because-- Well, yeah. Creepy. We've covered that. Repeatedly.
I step towards her, holding out a hand to take the vial.
"It's yours, right? I mean, you're not going around stealing other folks' blood? Because I'm not sure I can condone that, science or not."
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Date: 2012-01-22 03:24 am (UTC)This reaches my ears. To be fair, it didn't sound great in my head, either, but it was too close to my mouth at that point. "Ew. Clone blood, we're going to never say the other thing again."
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Date: 2012-01-22 07:13 am (UTC)"Couldn't we just call it, I dunno, blood?" I suggest, before something else comes to mind. Should I say thank you? It is, technically, a gift, and the trust she's placing in me by handing it over like this is as inherent as it is extreme. People in our position aren't typically forthcoming with anything that can be used against us someday. "Um."
I don't know where to look. My fingers curl around the vial, putting it out of sight, if not out of mind, and I glance at her. As far as Christmas' go, it's about as different from last year as I'd expected, but not as lonely as I anticipated.
"Thanks."
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Date: 2012-01-23 07:41 am (UTC)"Maybe a walking cane."
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Date: 2012-02-05 03:23 pm (UTC)"Besides, thirty's the new twenty. I'm hip."
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Date: 2012-02-07 08:04 am (UTC)No, that's not fair. I'm here because I chose to be here, and I'm not running out of the place because we're... whatever we are, and it's not nothing. I'll stick around.
"We say, 'groovy,' and 'da bomb.' 'Phat,' with a pee-aitch, that one's big nowadays."
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Date: 2012-02-09 05:34 pm (UTC)Well. The real Tesla. Not so much the guy who crashes Tony's classes.
"Yanno, I don't think I ever got the slang even when I was your claimed age."
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Date: 2012-02-10 07:07 am (UTC)Ooh, steampunk laboratory. Sure, mine turned into one of these, too, but I do like to see what other people have got going on. Kind of especially what's cooking in Peter's, because if we're duplicating effort I'd like to know about it.
And if we're not, well that's a thing to be proud of. Moving in my own direction.
"I was kidding, anyway, in the hopes of getting you to say 'da bomb.' It's mostly acronyms these days. Oh-em-gee, this lab is oh-tee-tee."
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Date: 2012-02-10 09:22 pm (UTC)"I taught high school, kiddo. I know the lingo. Don't really get the lingo, but I still know it... And no one's said dee-bee for years. Nice try."
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Date: 2012-02-11 07:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-12 02:58 pm (UTC)"And the Bugle didn't want my pictures anymore." Not to mention the fact that I'd just joined the only incarnation of the Avengers that didn't pay. "Had to find something to keep a roof over my head. Teaching seemed like a good alternative."
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Date: 2012-02-13 07:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-13 05:30 pm (UTC)"Took me a while to get the timer right," I admit, scratching the back of my head. "Jonah and Robbie were always on my case. Uh--" I stop, turning to look at her. "You have those guys where you're from?"
It's hard to imagine a Bugle without either of them, but a Bugle without ol' flattop just isn't the Bugle. But I'm pretty sure she's mentioned JJJ before, at least.
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Date: 2012-02-15 07:12 am (UTC)No, that's not fair, even if the guy hasn't exactly been helpful in the past, it's not like he's running a hack tabloid.
"JJJ used to completely have it out for Spider-Man. Not recently, though, nowadays he's a big fan. It's pretty weird."
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Date: 2012-02-16 01:36 am (UTC)"Like the moon, really, only... Less predictable." In an almost cheerful voice, I add, "But mostly he's made it his life's mission to make Spidey's a living hell! It's kinda weird that I find that a comforting similarity."