snikting | Appointments Post

Some people could shower in five minutes. Some in ten. Teenagers often showered in twenty and little children in thirty.

Logan was truly taking his time and would go on to forty-five minutes or an hour, should she not interrupt.

Luckily, Ororo was a patient woman. She'd also brought her journal, so she had something to occupy her time with while she waited.

She did interrupt once, though, to ask if he needed a second bar of soap in there. But she waited without complaint; getting Logan to actually shower was a victory in itself already. She figured that, as rare as an occurrence as it was, he had a lot to scrub off.

Her patience would be put to the test. In roughly one hour and fifteen minutes, Logan at last emerged. Both bars of soap had been obliterated, the bottom of the tub looked like it could be a throw rug, and he'd even bothered to shave his chin and neck. He smelled clean. And he'd even pulled on the dress pants and was in the middle of buttoning up the shirt.

Logan was unhappy about all of this.

"Damn soap. I can still smell it on me."

Tested patience or not, it's definitely worth the wait in her opinion. Ororo got up from where she'd seated herself on his couch, smiling.

"Oh, hush. I'm sure you won't have any trouble wearing it off later. I've heard people talking about there being an open bar at the reception." She walked over to him, tie in hand.

"Good. I won't have to bring my own booze this time."

He finished buttoning up his shirt, not realizing he was one button off until it was too late. "Damn."

"The change of scenery might be nice." Good Spirits was nice as far as company was concerned, but she knew it got old for him, after a while. Especially with how often Logan went there.

But seeing his predicament, Ororo could only shake her head and tsk. "Do you need help with this, too?" She slung the tie over her shoulder, already anticipating having to re-button his shirt for him.

"I can handle it," he insisted. He fumbled with the buttons, on by one. But even as he started again, he overcompensated and was now buttoning it wrong again.

She let him try, only because it really shouldn't be that hard and fully expected him to get it right. But he wasn't, and Ororo has to remind herself to keep from chuckling.

She was smiling a little though, when she finally reached out to pry his hands away from the buttons so she could do them herself.

"You are really not used to this, are you?" She unbuttoned him carefully but quickly, shaking her head in amusement. Now that she thought about it, Logan really was a t-shirt and jeans kind of man.

He relented, but looked incredibly unhappy about her buttoning him up. Childish even, which was not helped at all by the fact she was a head taller than he was.

"I ain't ever had to do fancy before. An' all them fumes from the soap are gettin' to my head."

She frowned, not at him but at the situation. "I'm sorry. I did try to find something I thought you might like, but I suppose I should have brought something milder." Though she wasn't really sure how he would receive baby soap.

Once she finished his buttons, she smoothed down his shirt and reached behind his neck with the necktie she'd brought. "Anyway, it is only for a few hours. I'm sure Tony and Pepper would appreciate it."

"Dunno why. They're gonna get married whether I'm there or not."

His presence seemed to be a non-issue and he wasn't insulted by that. Just annoyed that he had to be there anyway.

"Why does anyone invite guests to a wedding? They just want to share the moment with people important to them, Logan." And whether he saw it or not, he was one of those important people. She busied herself with fixing up his tie, falling quiet for a moment.

"How I managed to be one of those people, I can't figure out."

What bothered him now was how natural this felt. Too natural.

"It must be your winsome attitude." She smiled faintly, patting down his tie once she finished. There, all done.

"... But I must admit, I had an ulterior motive in coming here today, Logan."

Now he was concerned. He placed his hand on his tie, straightening it for himself so it wasn't too tight.

"Yeah?"

She nodded, drawing her hand back after lingering over his for a moment.

"Mm. I wanted to talk to you," she paused, taking a step back. "About the mission I'd been on, this last week."

He'd been wondering about that. People had been quiet about it. Which wasn't always a good thing.

"Somehow I get the feelin' this ain't good news."

Edited 2013-09-23 00:35 (UTC)

"That would depend on how you look at things, really." Ororo stepped away and headed for the nearest chair so she could sit. "It was relatively quiet, for the most part. No more than a recon mission."

"Sounds boring." He'd signed up for it, too. But the Malnosso passed on him. He'd been annoyed and bitterly figured the Mallies were sick of him being outside of the barrier so much. They were making him stay put. "So whaddya find out?"

"You would not have enjoyed it, no." She shot him a brief smile before frowning again. "But we found out quite a bit. I don't know if it is good news, but it's certainly alarming."

She paused, looking up at him. "You've been out there more than anyone else I know, Logan. How bad has the war been, to you?"

That was a doozie of a question. He looked out her with a frown and adjusted his tie again. Loosened some more.

"Sometimes it feels like we're losin' more than we're winnin'. A lot of good Mallies go down in those battles. It's a hopeless kinda war."

"We were told as much, yes. Worse than that, actually, if what Sir Catherine told us was any indication." It was worse than bad out there, but she had to confirm it from someone who she knew was out there a lot, someone she trusted.

"... We were sent out to that Iron Eye camp to find out what exactly it was they were up to. It turns out they have been working on something that could, by all accounts, very well help turn the tide to our favor." Though her words were optimistic, it didn't quite match the grim look on her face.

"The desert we were sent to hid an underground base of operations of the Third Party. The Iron Eye had plans to wipe out the entire city, Logan. To do that, they plan to deploy what is, essentially, a nuclear bomb."

A bomb. It was likely that Logan was among the few people in Luceti who'd been around long enough to remember the one time Earth unleashed so devastating a weapon. An awful thing, but Logan had never shed tears for it. He'd been in the trenches of the war. The bomb was the beginning of the end of that war.

"So it's come to that, huh? So what'd the Mallies say when you told 'em?"

"Nothing. We made the decision not to tell them." Ororo sighed, leaning forward to rest her arms on her knees. Even now, days after they'd returned from that mission, it was hard to admit what they did. This was probably the first time she'd even talked about it since coming back. "We weighed our options, and in the end we helped search for the location of the cultists' city. We didn't find it ourselves, but we were told that they had a good idea by the time we left. And that the Shift explosive would be ready for use in a matter of weeks. Perhaps sooner."

She raised her eyes to look up at Logan. "In effect, I suppose you could say that we essentially condemned that entire city to death."

Compliance through inaction. But not even that. She helped find the city and participated. Even if she didn't set the bomb off, she was a part of it. And Logan found himself awed that Ororo could be taken to that point.

She wouldn't even take lives in the drafts. But this...

"... don't suppose it matters if I said I'd do the same thing."

[Action, September 14]

calmbeforethe - 2013-09-26 01:51 (UTC) - Expand

[Action, September 14]

snikting - 2013-09-26 03:49 (UTC) - Expand