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♤ Network || Log - Raise a Glass

WHO: Cayde-6 and erryone
WHERE: The Deep End (Orange-13 on map)
WHAT: Cayde doesn't like dwelling on negative things so HEY Bar Grand Opening ~~come drink away your sorrows and stress and enjoy company in general~~
WHEN: 'bout a couple of days after the storm's passed, time flexible thereafter
WARNINGS: N/A will change as necessary
NOTES: Use whatever format you want

[Network - Video]

[The image starts out crooked but the Exo's actively adjusting it before he steps back and gives someone a thumb's up off-screen.]

All right, so good news? Nothing sprung a leak despite prior circumstances, surrounding area's a little damp though, but all in all? Everything's pretty much how I left it. Even got some supposed cyanana booze that's been uh...going through this still since before we left for space. -okay I'm not exactly sure how that might taste? So in the meantime, I've got a backup plan.

[He seems to remember something then, coming up close to the communicator.]

But Cayde, you say, what's all this about anyway? Excellent question! I was so excited I forgot to say. Ahem. So, some of you- a good number, actually, might be aware that I have been in the process of putting together a bar-slash-common gathering area type of hangout...thing. It's pretty much been done, just not stocked- but now that we're finally back from...all that and then some, I've got a selection of fine drinks for your...uh... drinking pleasure. Also some non-alcoholic stuff for the non-drinkers and the under-aged. Oh, and there's tea and coffee too.

[Fishing around in his pocket, he holds up a map he's drawn up, the location circled.]

We're right down here, southeast sector, past the lake- I'm working on getting some kind of a landmark but this place is fresh out of neon signs. Anyway! I'll be around. Come as you please, even if I'm not- don't trip up the stairs, help yourself and uh, don't mind if the fish stare at you.

Making the network announcement had helped to fully kick his mood back into a semblance of normal. Truth be told, he just wanted to gather up people together, real people, and settle in with an ambiance of more pleasant times and warmer company.

The backdrop of the water-filled courtyard that made up the center of the nest of buildings had been something Cayde had at the time thought whimsical. During the daylight hours the light that filtered through the large window was a wavering green-blue, offset by the small sconces along the wall and a few individual lanterns at tables and flanking the bar area adjacent to the makeshift aquarium.

Cayde had set up the various bottles of drinks he'd acquired from their planetary pit-stop and scavenged from the cafe on a somewhat crooked shelf behind the bar itself. He'd been trying to go for rustic like those Old West saloons but in the middle gave up and just let things shape itself as he found them. The glassware is just as mismatched as the furniture, but everything's clean and ready to be made use of. If there's anything he really wishes he had, it would be an old-fashioned phonograph player or some kind of music source just to drive off the quiet that filled the space when no people did.

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Wanda, meanwhile, is absolutely fascinated by the fish, as weird and freaky-looking as some of them are. Vision would have loved this place. She should make sure to take some videos to show him later, whenever she gets to return to him.

(She has to keep believing that she'll get to go home to Naviadna someday.)

"It is not his fault that trouble finds us here," she says, thinking of the anger wasps. "We are all doing our best." Herself included right now, though Wanda would be lying if she said she wasn't disappointed that Cayde isn't around. She's never actually been alone with any Tony Stark before and, well, it does make her a little more nervous. No buffers. No graceful exit if this goes horribly wrong and she needs one. Hopefully he won't ask too many questions about home...

"You don't like the fish?"

As he was taking it all in, Tony hadn't really noticed that the massive aquarium had caught Wanda's attention until he turned at the question, lip raised and tongue between his teeth as an answer that quickly faded to smile in surprise at her instead. The play of the light on her face was suddenly powerfully reminiscent enough for Tony to press a hand to his chest, tipping his head back as he asked, "You remember that office Rhodey had, after he left the team, the underwater one for the salvage company?" That did feel like a lifetime ago, and Tony wasn't entirely sure if that was just because of this planet or because so much had happened since then. Either way, it was a surprisingly warm sear of nostalgia to see that light on Wanda's face, and he was still holding his heart as he continued toward the bar, where the sign he found finally managed to distract him. He plucked it up to flip toward Wanda so she could read, 'Gone out. Help yourselves, play nice, and don't wreck my bar.' "Very trusting," he observed.

She turns to him, shaking her head. "Rhodey just joined the Avengers, with Vision and Sam and me." And it's hard to imagine him abandoning his military career even if he did leave the team. He has a good heart; they may not be close but she can't see him anywhere he couldn't actively do good.

(Notably, she didn't namedrop Pietro. She hopes Tony won't ask.)

"And we are going to play nice and not wreck his bar because we are good Avengers, yes?" Sorry Tony, Wanda's not actually a stick in the mud but she is protective of her friends.

That was a strange enough revelation that Tony had plenty of questions to get through before he was concerned about no explicit mention of Wanda's brother, assuming instead that of course they were together, that was a given. "What, just now...?" he lead with, putting the sign back down slowly as he stared at her and only being further convinced that she definitely wasn't a teenager, and trying to reevaluate how long Steve had suggested their team had been together. He was pretty sure Steve had made it sound like it had been a while. "Shit, sweetheart, you really left them hanging, the whole world would have ended a few times over without you back home," he continued and, so baffled by this, added again, "Like, just?"

How good of an Avenger he was going to be was apparently going to be left up to interpretation, as Tony wasn't about to make any sweeping claims in that regard, and slid around the counter instead to investigate what there was on offer. Cayde appeared to be set up prepared to serve well enough, but what he had to serve was a total mystery to Tony as he scanned the bottles of what he hoped was all ingestable liquids. Maybe he wasn't going to be doing any drinking at all, to be safe. Pointing to the array, he offered, "Pick your...colour."

That 'sweetheart' earns him another annoyed glance. "A few months before the Atroma kidnapped me the first time." So there's the confirmation if he needed it that this is the same Wanda seen in the later 'episodes' of the Drift Fleet. She shrugs. "They stopped the Chitauri without me. And it doesn't seem to matter that we are here. Everyone else on the Fleet was from the future and they remembered me being home with them, even though I didn't go back."

Wanda leaves the aquarium window to join Tony behind the counter, scanning the bottles on offer and wrinkling her nose. "I wish he'd labeled them. These could be anything." She taps a bottle of something fruit punch red. "This is probably what the Agrii serve us? But I don't recognzie anything else."

That red bottle must have been the highly flammable one that Cayde had a stock of, so they both at least had a little bit of context for it. "You like it?" Tony asked, but he was already picking up the bottle and turning to find a glass for Wanda before she had an answer for him. He was continuing instead, "The kids--Tommy and Billy--they insist they're from my future, too. I don't think I'm buying it, but if that's true...You know, what's the pattern? What's the point? Why not bring us from the same time as everyone else?" He shrugged, shaking his head, not really expecting any answer for his frustration that would be entirely satisfying, not until he could shake it out of the people who brought them here. Of course, he was still talking, "I don't know what a Chitauri is, but I wasn't on the team with you when you first started. You were my replacement, so--maybe that you got to have that fight."

"I won't--" But before she can even get a full sentence out, Tony's snatched the bottle off the shelf. "You can have it if you want, but I have seen what only a little of that does to people, even people like Steve." And there's no one currently here she trusts to be physically able to deal with her and get her home if she were to become that inebriated so...no thanks. She's trying not to make a mess of Cayde's new place, after all.

"If they brought me from a year earlier I would just be a normal human. No use to anyone." She turns away, still scanning the bottle rack. It's easier to talk about that if she's not looking at him. "In the place we were before, they sometimes brought people after they had died in their own worlds. And sometimes people would go home for a while and come back with new memories, like what happened to Tommy. No one knows why, or if there is a real reason."

Edited 2020-11-28 19:57 (UTC)

'Only a little' it was then, though the act of pouring a glass after he had discovered one under the bar felt itself like it was scratching a deep itch that set Tony's jaw on edge to cut short for only a generous mouthful to offer to Wanda. He didn't hear the 'no' in that answer, apparently, and hardly waited for her to take the offering before he was raising the bottle again, without his own drink to use, to encourage with a clink of glass, "Alla tua."

Pushing the bottle onto the bar, he gave Wanda another once over to ask, "That's a little late, isn't it?" Was that an invasive question? Tony wasn't a mutant biologist on any level, but that might have been basically asking why she only hit puberty in her 20s. "I mean--..." he tried to buffer, twirling a hand to pull more words out of the air, "...did Pietro...? Is that normal, for your Earth?" That would explain why she wasn't an Avenger sooner, Magneto wouldn't have even found her yet. It would have been nice to have an argument against how useless a baseline human was, but without the suit, Tony was proving how worthless he was here so far. It was not a promising case study.

Wanda winces slightly but doesn't touch the glass - well, he can't say she didn't warn him. Cayde had mentioned something about having soda and teas, if only she could find where he'd put them. That bottle of teal liquid swirling with glitter does look tempting, though...maybe a little wouldn't hurt? As long as she can keep enough of her filter in place not to go off on Tony.

She already flinches when he mentions Pietro, going stiff as a board as he continues. He doesn't know, she tells herself. Even Tony Stark wouldn't just go blundering into that minefield if he knew the full story...right?

She takes a slightly shuddering breath, tries to calm the urge to snap to just get him to stop. "I told you, I'm not like your Wanda." It still comes out a little sharper than she intended. Whoops. That teal concoction is looking better by the second. "There are no mutants in my world. I'm the only one...like this."

Edited 2020-11-28 21:42 (UTC)

The tension was hard to miss, but harder to pinpoint the cause of, especially with Tony already assuming he might have stumbled into a very personal question about Wanda's hormones. It made him clear his throat awkwardly, looking longingly himself at the drink he abandoned on the counter and grasping for an easy segue with one drumming hand. No mutants wasn't any more comfortable, leaving Tony without enough context to understand whether she meant her whole planet was always missing an entire species, or she had more of a direct hand in that reality.

"Sure," he tried to accept lightly, but now they both weren't looking at each other so it wasn't particularly effective. "And I'm the only one like this, which, depending on your perspective, is a roaring shame, I mean, look at me. Does that mean your brother's just, like, a guy? He would hate that. I bet he's still a prick about it."

"He's dead," she snaps, snatching the bottle off the shelf and finally turning back to face him. She wouldn't like to hear anyone talk about Pietro like that, but especially not Tony Stark. "We were the only survivors of Strucker's experiments and Ultron killed him. So no, it isn't the same."

It would be simple enough to use her powers to call a glass to her hand, but right now Wanda needs the simple task of bending to retrieve one and setting it on the counter to ground herself. She knows, she knows, that this Tony doesn't deserve her ire. She shouldn't have snapped at him. But at the same time, he is still a Tony Stark blithely ripping into old wounds, and she can't quite bring herself to apologize yet, either.

It's a work in progress.

And maybe if she had enough of whatever-this-is, she'd stop caring, but then she'd probably have to text Lorna or the Soldier or Cayde to be prepared to come get her first and make sure she doesn't decide dangling Tony by his feet or chasing him around with an army of chairs is a great idea.

That would explain the tension, Tony could accept that. He sucked in a slow breath between grit teeth as she rounded on him, tilting his head as he searched once again for another out, as though he wasn't 0 for 2 so far, barely capable of being able to emotionally process what she actually said at a good time, never mind under that look. The programming would have to change, he could figure out that much, because assuming he knew anything about Wanda had yet to work for him at all.

"Sorry, sweetheart," he eventually breathed as Wanda fixed her focus on the glass, and he could watch her hands as well, "I didn't know. That must have been--I can't imagine what that's like." Either losing Pietro, or a brother.

"I hope you never know for yourself," Wanda says quietly, pouring out a small amount of the teal shimmery liquid to taste. She sighs. "Our worlds are very different. Some things are...complicated."

But if Wanda was going to elaborate, whatever she was about to say flies out the window as she takes a sip of the whatever-it-is and makes a face. "--that does not taste like it looks."

'Complicated' was one way of putting it, and Tony hesitated briefly with his tongue between his teeth, trying to produce something that felt sincere and warm or could at least make up for his blundering into this conversation, and he landed on, "Yeah." It would have been nice to know that there as a Wanda that wasn't suffering with a traumatic loss like this, but there remained a measurable consistency in the unforgiving lives the he rows assembled here had lived.

The face Wanda made was almost enough to make Tony laugh, getting as far as a smirk instead as he replied, "What a surprise." After their culinary experience on the Agrii ship, it was dangerous to have such expectations anymore. "Red's out," he finally seemed to accept of the abandoned glass on the bar, and continued with a point to Wanda's drink, "And that's no good. Should I line 'em up?," with a gesture to the yet to be discovered array. Wanda was doing such a god job so far, it would be a shame to abandon the project now.

The Maximoffs unfortunately always seem to pull the 'oops! all tragedies' card. But her prickliness aside, this Wanda appears to be mostly holding it together at least. For now.

(It helps that the people around her, both from later in her timeline and from other worlds, have gone to lengths to protect her from knowing about terrible things she either can't change or isn't responsible for.)

"It's fine if you like sour things. But it is not what I was expecting." She makes another face and gives the bottle a light shove towards the red one into the 'nope' category. "We need labels, or a menu. I am not sure how safe some of these are."

Right, what would the point of this experiment be without labels? Tony raised a finger, one minute, he had this, and crouched to root around where he had found the glass in what must have been some kind of logical system to Cayde, but looked like one long junk drawer to Tony. There were plenty of very nice looking rocks, if you were into that kind of thing, and a jar of what looked like slimy beans, and another of what he hoped was some kind of mortared flour and wouldn't be including in the taste test to find out. Knowing Cayde, though, it wouldn't be long before Tony produced what he was looking for, and drew himself up again with the elegant arch of the pompously victorious: paper and a nub of charcoal. "We're helping, right?" he prompted with a smirk that said he knew this was not what Wanda meant at all, but it was going to be a hard won battle if she wanted to try to convince him otherwise. Crouching over his paper, he scrawled 'SOUR XX', then thought briefly before adding below it, 'RED', and tearing these labels from the sheaf. As this was clearly going to be a very permanent exercise, his bonding agent was a quick lick to the back of the page before tapping the helpful stickers onto their respective bottles. "Next," he announced, grabbing another bottle from the array blindly, and raising it for Wanda to produce her glass.

Is it possible for Wanda to look any less thrilled? Probably. And Tony's the perfect person to find out. This was absolutely not what she'd signed up for - taste testing a bunch of weird space ice cream is one thing, but a bunch of weird space alcohol? She's not even sure all this stuff is safe for human consumption.

Which is why Wanda flicks her finger and her glass retreats, leaving a wisp of scarlet energy in its wake. "If you are just going to grab random bottles, it's your turn this time. You don't even know if we can drink that."

"Now why would I have drinks that people can't...drink?" comes a voice from the window just outside the bar entrance. Cayde steps on through as casually as though he'd entered from any door, his Ghost trailing in the air behind him.

"Anyway I'm pretty sure they're consumable by humans. Although after Steve downed the red stuff back on the ship like it was just a regular beer, I did have to see if there was anything on the stronger side. Don't worry though- nothing's ate through the bottles so I'm still pretty sure it's more drink than pot cleaner."

Sauntering over to the counter, he gives the two a grin, nodding at Wanda, then at Tony. "Glad you guys dropped by. Sorry, had an errand to run. Mildly surprised the place isn't on fire." There's a smirk at Tony with the latter.

Wanda looking like she might kill him was not at all a deterrent to Tony, who was quite used to a look like that and didn't even have to work all that hard for it this time, but he did stutter at her suggestion that it was his turn at mystery bottle Russian roulette. It was hard to tell whether she didn't know, didn't care, or just didn't remember why that wasn't a great suggestion for him, and some of that context might have made it easier for Tony to get past the, "A-ah..." stage of this process.

Cayde making his very weird entrance through the window at least broke Tony out of that loop, making him snap his mouth shut to raise an eyebrow at the display, clutching the bottle to his chest. "I was just getting there," Tony insisted as if this was a defence of his character. "But Wanda was insisting we name your selection, make you a menu, and some of us can't say no to a pretty face. I think of it as a virtue."

Well, Tony can't be the only one accidentally blundering into soft spots. Wanda wouldn't have said it if she'd known, but their worlds really are very different and that's not an issue her Tony has to deal with.

But there's not much time to wonder at how she's suddenly rendered him speechless before Cayde comes in through the window like that's a normal thing to do when the bar is this high up. "Have a little more faith in me?" She does try not to be a walking disaster - things just tend to go not as planned around her. Side effect of being an Avenger.

"This feels like our ice cream adventure but with higher stakes. That one--" she says, pointing to the shimmery blue drink, "--is not fair. It has no right to be so pretty but so sour."

"Names would be good, I'll admit. The ones that do have labels, I can't read, but yeah, a menu would probably be ideal." The Exo raises his hands. "Okay, I kinda got in a hurry and totally forgot some basic things."

He leans against the counter by Wanda since Tony's hanging out behind it, looking over at the drink that's pointed out. "Is it? I didn't think it was that bad. Or was it another one... Maybe it's my taste buds." Do Exos even have taste buds? It's still a mystery how he even stomachs anything but Cayde moves on, these questions things he's simply stopped bothering to wonder.

"Maybe it needs to be mixed with something. What's next? You try the orangey one with the red swirl? I think that one was fruity. Fun to look at too."

Cayde may have easily moved on from the taste buds issue, but it had Tony glancing meaningfully to Wanda, eyes wide then brow furrowed with the question, does he have taste buds?, as though the mystery of Cayde's humanity was a secret they were keeping between them for his sake. A mix wouldn't be a bad idea if they knew what anything else in these bottles did, and that wasn't about to stop Tony who nodded purposefully and observed, "The lady drinks with her eyes first, of course, cocktails are the way to go." And adding a little sour to something fruity was a good start to one of those, so Tony spun on Cayde's array again to find that red swirl, twisting the bottle in his hand to watch the colour remain resolutely suspended with a curious pout.

There was definitely a limit to how much of this he should have been doing, for his own sanity, and Tony easily rationalized that doing any of the actual tasting must have been the damaging part, and pouring was just relaxing, he could have been pouring anything, it was fine. In a fresh glass, the mix of the warm coloured liquor with a shot of the sour resulted in an enchanting, glittery swirl that looked more like a snowglobe than a drink to Tony, but he pushed across the bar expectantly.

Wanda just shrugs at them both, looking for all the world like it's perfectly reasonable to her that Cayde might somehow be able to taste things. Why wouldn't it be? Vision sort of could, so it doesn't seem that odd to her that Cayde's creators could have figured out the same thing. "Maybe your sense of sour things is not as strong as mine."

Wanda watches Tony grab the next bottle with some interest - of course she does, that red swirl is rather reminiscent of her own powers - but when it's actually passed to her she does pause for a moment before picking the glass up and glancing between the two of them. If she knew what Tony was really struggling with she'd shut this entire charade down, but right now, despite her protests, it's still all mostly in good fun. "If I die, I'm going to haunt you two. You'll never find any of your things again."

She takes a sip, blinking as the flavor settles. "It is...interesting. A good interesting."

"Maybe I should just hire you to do the fancy drink stuff," Cayde suggests to Tony, not entirely joking. The man looks like he knows his way around a bar, right at home back there.

The resulting drink that's set before Wanda seems to seal it, and the look itself makes the Exo 'oooh' appreciatively. He turns his attention expectantly to Wanda, an eager grin on his face. "At least I'll be haunted by a pretty face," he counters, ever looking on the bright side.

The drink is given as good an approval as any. Cayde flashes a thumbs-up at Tony. "Interesting is good. Who do we name it after, you or Wanda?"

"You couldn't afford me," Tony readily replied, pointing the neck of the bottle he still held in Cayde's direction before recorking it with finality. The threat from Wanda only had him leaning closer with his elbows on the bar once his hands were free, chin in one hand and eyebrows raised, mouth open in a smirk that said he was ready to hear how much more scary she could be. "Will you keep me up all night, too?" he proposed with a very innocent flutter of his lashes.

He was straightening again abruptly with the energy of success, arms open to welcome Cayde's thumbs up and Wanda's lukewarm reception like they were honourable accolades. "Wanda's got to have the honours, it's the muse that truly deserves the recognition for the work."

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interrupting exo~~

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