9361/All Truths and No Lies

All Truths and No Lies
Date of Scene:	29 September 2019
Location:	Coffee Shop in Brooklyn
Synopsis:	Diana and Steve talk through the events of the Sanctum's recovery.
Cast of Characters:	Captain America, Wonder Woman
Tinyplot:	Asgard's Requiem

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Captain America has posed:
Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Thumbpads bounce quietly off the cardboard coffee cup in Steve's hands, rested on the table. The coffee shop, a little corner place in Brooklyn, isn't busy this time of night -- half of the reason why he chose it. The other half being the staff has never recognized him here; or, if they have, they respect his privacy in a way few people do.

The Captain's here, and waiting, because he received a text from none other than Wonder Woman about not only the realization of Bucky still being alive, but also why on earth he tried tackling her from the air in the Sanctum. He'll admit, only to himself, that the borrowed Asgardian armor sporting a certain Trickster God's colors was comfortable despite the bulk. Ah, twisty magic.

Regardless, in a Dodgers baseball cap, brown leather jacket with fleece lapels over his shirt, jeans and boots, he sits and glowers at his coffee. It's...frankly a moderately guilty kind of glower.

Very few people can make him do a rude, blunt self-check.

Wonder Woman has posed:
Diana's arrival is without fanfare or event, she simply opens the door to the coffee shop like any other customer and strides on inside. She's wearing a faux leather jacket in a deep maroon color and its over top of a white loose fit shirt with a low scooped neckline, a silver chain around her slender neck, and a pair of black slim fit pants hugging her lower half that lead down into wedge heeled boots, its a very early autumn styled outfit.

Of course, Diana still sticks out, as she's over six feet in height with those heeled boots on, her dark hair tied back into a ponytail it shows off the perfectly sculpted features of her ever-youthful face.

She strides into the store, and only needs a moment to visually find Steve, her advanced senses leave her little trouble locating people in most instances, especially the ones as casual as this.

She forgoes getting herself a drink and instead just walks toward him, as she steps close she speaks out. "Steve." She says, moving to seat herself across from him. Once she's settled into the chair she places her brown eyes upon his face and just slowly lowers her pointed chin to stare at him, expectantly...?

Captain America has posed:
Given Diana truly can't be missed, she's spotted the very second she enters the place. With a preperatory inhale, the Captain sits up straighter in his chair and plasters on a mild smile. Abruptly, he removes his baseball cap even as he's sitting in a knee-jerk retraction back to manners instilled in him in the 1930s. Fingers flatten away any hint of hat-hair before he clears his throat.

She says his name and Steve grudgingly meets them. Urg -- why is it like Mathair all over again?! Not even Barnes has this ability! ...is it like this when he himself gives people that calm and searching look?

"Y'know, with that look, you don't even need the lasso," he tries as a weakly-joking rejoinder to the conversation happening with just a look.

Wonder Woman has posed:
Diana's response to his words is to raise her chin up just a little but to angle her stare off to the left just slightly, a simple gesture that suggested she had a response to that instantly but pulled back on staying it at the last split second.

"I did not bring it." She says to him then, her voice soft and completely calm. "After we... fought... in the Sanctum, I was upset, in disbelief... but once I settled and thought about it, I realized that there simply must be more to what had lead you to be there, doing what you were doing, that I was not informed of." A brief pause is left there before she adds on to that. "Or so I am hoping."

Its then that she raises her hands up and places them against the edge of the table in front of her stomach, her thumbs gently touching against one another and her fingers curled ever so slightly. Her eyes? They remain right on Steve's face, unyielding and asking for an explanation without verbalizing it.

Captain America has posed:
Yep, Diana's got the Mathair Look down pat. Steve amuses himself momentarily with imagining Bucky on the end of it, given Barnes has the best hang-dog look this side of the river, but now that it's turned on him? It makes those broad shoulders droop a little as the Captain sighs.

His eyes fall to her lips and then to his coffee. "s'a bit of a story," he starts off quietly. "'nd I'd half-hoped you'd've brought the lasso because it'd keep me from wandering off base in telling it, but you can trust me to stay on the straight 'nd narrow with it."

He takes a fortifying sip of his coffee and then meets her dark eyes again. His voice remains low, sotto-voce to anyone with standard human hearing. Diana will hear him just fine.

"Buck has been back for a while, couple'a years. Last December, he went AWOL. HYDRA got him with an old command phrase. Managed to get him back with a scuffle or two, but the Black Sleep took him while he was in SHIELD custody. Loki was on the premises, we got to talking, 'nd he said he'd take a look at Buck. Turns out he had the ability to not only wake him up from the Sleep, but remove all the bullshit HYDRA crammed into his skull." Steve's voice, while calm, has still gone tight and crisp. "He did...but he claimed I owed him favors...three of 'em. Buck took one for himself, earned another recently enough." The fingers of one head drag across his forehead. "This was my last favor, guarding the Sanctum and Loki against attack. Didn't do a good job of it." He allows himself a small, twisted smile of mortified relief. "You 'nd the others were enough to goose him out, apparently. You throw a mean shoulder, Miss Prince."

Wonder Woman has posed:
The first part about the lasso gets just a slight change in head position from Diana, a shift from a left leaning stare to a right, but she otherwise just keeps a steady and even look upon the man.

She'd had no idea that James was alive all of these years, not that she was sworn to have that information, she wasn't close to him like Steve was even if she'd still considered him a friend. Seeing Bucky's name on a list of soldiers who'd died had effected her greatly that day that she'd found it, she'd wanted to reach out to contact Steve about it but by the time she had, she'd found out that Steve had... done as he'd done, presumably dying himself.

Now they're -both- back and alive, its a surprise to say the least.

"I see..." She softly states as Steve provides the explanation with Loki at the center of it. "So HYDRA is to blame for harming James, but also... to thank for bringing him back to us--in a way. While Loki is to blame for using you both to achieve whatever goal it was that he had cooked up, but also to thank for bringing James inner peace that HYDRA took from him."

She glances a way to a NY taxi cab outside as it lets a couple off at the side street, then she looks back over to Steve. "This is an example of communication lacking between our individual groups, Steve. I would have fought even harder, if things had warranted it. I did not have intentions of killing you, but if the need had been there for a more pressing situation, it would not be beyond my capabilities. It is what I was trained to do, after all."

She pauses again. "And this unsettles me to even consider it could happen, in hinds sight."

Captain America has posed:
Steve lets out another sigh, champion sigher that he is. It's rather voluminous with his lung capacity. Blunt nails scratch at the back of his neck for a second after her pause in thought.

"Believe me, it was no cup of tea realizing //you// were the thing Loki was most nervous about. I didn't get the impression he knew exactly who'd showed up, but Buck mentioned you'd spoken with him 'nd tried to get into the Sanctum. It only figured, when I saw you, that you'd be the one I'd have to go up against. Diana, I..."

The Captain's voice fades out before he scoffs at himself, his expression crumpling. "Diana, Loki can undo what he did at any time...'nd it puts Bucky back at square one, with all of the commands...all of the catch-phrases -- anybody who knows 'em could turn him on the drop of a few words." His throat moves in a swallow. "When HYDRA had him, he shot me, clear through the star on my chest. If it hadn't been for others present, I would've bled out in the woods. I'd be the one to have to try 'nd stop him again 'nd..."

His gaze drops back to his coffee while his lips thin. "Who'm I kidding. I'd do it again...get him back, one way or another. 'm sorry it brought me to fists with you. If I'd've had a way around it, I would've taken that route instead."

Wonder Woman has posed:
Now that the picture starts to become more visible and the puzzle of it all starts to get integral pieces laid into it, Diana doesn't sigh but she does physically express a similar internal feeling by looking down and away from him then.

But it only lasts a moment as she looks up once more and shakes her head from right to left, causing the pony tail of dark hair tied back behind her head to wave behind her shoulders. "Loki is a capable fool, but he's a fool all the same. Whatever 'leverage' he has over James, we can find a way around it. We can find a way to lock him out of James' head. I am sure of that. There are many powerful telepaths in this world, Steve, some of them I even have a tenuous working relationship with. They alone may be able to find a way to work with the issues that are plaguing him after HYDRA's manipulative ways."

A slight shake of her head again then as she dismisses herself there. "Whatever it takes to keep him not feeling beholden to that foul trickster. To make -you- not feel beholden to him either." She stares straight over the table and again dips her chin just a little while raising her dark brows up. "We can figure it out. If we work together. This is something I have been pushing for for a very long time now. Trying to get our teams to work more closely amongst one another, so that there are not communication shortcomings that lead us coming to blows like this."

Diana then settles back into her chair, though her posture is still perfectly straight like the well mannered woman she is. "I thought Loki was going to destroy our world to save his... This is why I attacked you. I thought you were helping him achieve that goal... for -some- reason."

Captain America has posed:
To hear of his own morals compromised, even in theory, has Steve sitting up and giving Diana a shocked look.

"Diana...pardon my French, but it'll be a cold day in //hell// before I give that asshole any more satisfaction about a goddamn thing." He lets go of the cardboard coffee cup before it deflates into a mess of sloshed brew on the table's top. Instead, the fist closes on midair and then relaxes again as he nods, now appearing tired -- as if the confession had taken something from him, but also relaxed him, like popping in a loose joint.

"'m not against contacting another strong telepath, but it's Buck's decision. I can rail all day long from my soapbox about keeping folks from mucking around in his skull, but he's gotta make the decision to let 'em in. Me making it for him when he was in the Sleep was...he trusted me -- and he still does," the Captain claims, a low note begging someone to argue with this. "I don't disagree with open communications either. Just...didn't seem like something where I needed to pull in everybody else. Small fire."

Wonder Woman has posed:
When Steve releases that rather spirited use of a curse word, Diana's head tilts toward her right shoulder. She seems very surprised by this, but softens a bit as he further explains his stance on all of that. Still though... as she slowly rights her head straight again she pulls her arms back and places her hands into her lap beneath the table.

"I would not call it a small fire." She responds to him, voice still calm and soft with that husky tone to it. "Loki's efforts were setting off magical alarms across the globe. He displaced the Sorcerer Supreme from his guardianship, defending this world from evils that would do it untold harms if they were permitted in. Loki has no care for Earth, its people, he only cares about himself."

She stops there and draws in a breath between her lips, her eyes glance once more toward the street on her left through the window and then she looks back to Steve across from her. "I am glad that you have your friend back. I would like to speak to him more formally sometime soon as well. I want him to know that he can come to me for help too, should he need it. I imagine the world looks... as different and... daunting as it must have looked to you when you returned to it."

Captain America has posed:
"No, no, the small fire was when he undid Buck's HYDRA innoculation. All that..." Steve shakes his head and looks away out the window, squinting. He's silent for a time before he speaks again, still diverted by the world going on beyond the confines of the coffee shop.

"Yeah, I'd like to think Buck knows he can come speak you, after all that happened back in the War, but...I'll remind him." His true-blues flick back to Diana. "He should have a sit-down with you. You were around when we were AWOL. Bet you've got some wisdom we don't." She gets a small smile that silently asks forgiveness, if there's any to be had.

Wonder Woman has posed:
Diana's stare remains on Steve as he speaks all of this, as he looks outside and back to her. She does show him a soft smile at the last of what he says and after a moment she draws in a breath, then places one hand up onto the table in front of her. "I spent the better part of the last one hundred years purposefully trying to keep myself out of the limelight. Throughout those years, I felt that it was my civic duty not to interfere with the ways of mankind, too greatly, that it was their place and right to deal with their problems as they saw fit. But..." A light exhale, a little shakes of her head from side to side and she continues.

"But then the problems seemed to grow too large, The powers that people are holding now are too great for the common individual to content with. The ladder of power has been climbed to points that... it became my duty to step out of the backdrop and in to that light..."

She leans forward just a little then, still staring at him. "But I need others with me, working with me. I cannot do this alone, I come with great power of my own, but I am just one person in the end, a child of this Earth as much as you are. I need your help, Steve. I said that I was disappointed in you back there... and in the moment I was. But in truth, I have much faith in you to do the right thing, and I am sure that you did that now. I just..." She shows a faint smirk then, glances down and shrugs her shoulders.

"I just hope I do not have to fight you again any time soon." She glances back up at him and shows a true smirk for the man.

Captain America has posed:
Relieved to finally see her lips take a shape other than a composed or thinned line, Steve returns the smirk with a grin. He dimples to boot. His chin drops as he too drops his gaze briefly to his reflection in the dark surface of his coffee.

"Me neither, Diana -- and that's honest as the day is long," he says on a sigh. "I'd envy you being able to spend that time being quiet 'nd out of of the lime-light, but...you're a child of Earth like me." Her words are repeated with respect. "It must've been hard sitting back 'nd watching the rest of us flail around like goobers. Still."

The curt nod is a throwback to every single time they stood across from one another under dimly-lit tables during the war. All Steve's missing is his uniform and shield.

"I'm beside you, Diana."

Wonder Woman has posed:
Diana huffs out a short little laugh at the talk of her sitting back. "I guess you could say it was the closest period of my life where I acted like Batman. Still helping, only doing it much more carefully and attempting to stay out of the recognition of others." She pauses then and another half smirk is shown to Steve then. "Only no cape and bat-themed cowl ever adorned my person." A subtle little jab at Batman, wherever he is out there.

At the part where he reaffirms that he's with her, she gives him a decisive singular nod. "I am glad to hear it." She states, then shows him a more warmth-filled smile. "I will not harp on you any longer then. You yet remain my favorite Avenger, but please do not tell Tony I said that." Now she lets her smile turn into a grin. "Or Janet. I do not want Janet's ire. She is a powerful young woman, and I would be remiss to know that she is no longer my friend."

It would seem her mood has ligtened up then, which is the whole point of a good communication session!

Captain America has posed:
Her little funning at Batman has the Captain smiling into his cup of coffee held to his mouth. He finishes it and sets down the empty cup, now folding his arms on the table. Those mobile brows dance upwards at her claim.

"No, Janet's not one to cross," he agrees good-naturedly. "Cross my heart I won't tell either Tony or Janet. 'm good at keeping secrets." A fingertip draws over the flat of his leather coat on his chest just in case, X-marked, to the left of his sternum.

"Gotta declare you're my favorite of the League, but you know the drill: no hurting feelings by telling others." Steve grins back at her.

Wonder Woman has posed:
Diana holds a grin to his response, including the League part and to it she responds wordlessly by raising her right hand up to her forehead and giving him a nice crisp salute, even though she never served in a military where that gesture was a 'thing' she still manages to pull it off pretty well, not perfectly... but she probably wasn't trying to make it 'perfect' in this instance.

"And I would have pegged you for a Superman super-fan." Diana quips back though, still holding her grin. "Okay. I am going to go get myself a drink then. You do not need to linger and entertain me, if you are busy or need to be somewhere, but I would not mind the company either." She says as she moves to rise up to that full impressive height of hers, reaching into her jacket pocket to get a small pocketbook, presumably with her money inside.

"Need a refill? Or a cookie? Or a tasty muffin?" Diana asks, clearly back to her slightly-humorous and good-natured self with the Captain.

Captain America has posed:
"Certainly wouldn't say no to a refill or a muffin," the Captain opines even as he too scoots out his chair. He shucks his coat to hang it over its back, marking the table as taken unless anyone else walks in, and joins Diana in walking towards the counter. He has an easy-going air about him now that things have been settled and his small smile is infectious at least where the barista's involved.

"Just don't tell Superman you're my favorite," he reminds Wonder Woman before he asks for one of the banana-nut muffins gleaming behind the glass bakery display.