Owner	Pose
James Barnes	So, that other ninja that was there, the one who did the actual killing, and who ghosted off when the cops showed.....there he is. Buck's in t-shirt and sweats, hair tied up in a loose knot, Lili lying off to one side with her water dish before her. He's working on a heavy bag that must be built to take tank rounds at close range, because even the alloy fist isn't exploding it. Working up a sweat, already. He's pink, that V of sweat visible on the pale gray shirt....and the arm isn't really covered, beneath the t-shirt's arm.
Elektra Natchios	In the end, Elektra hadn't stollen the car, but that didn't matter much. Her words had been meant only to make Matt smile, and they had. Their running joke carried into yet another situation. Not that she didn't know how to steal cars, or that she wouldn't have... but somehow the presence of Agent May suggested that another time might be more appropriate. And now, later, at the Triskelion, making appearances, Elektra had found herself wandering the halls while Matt 'signed' paperwork and did the 'official' business of getting Elektra 'released' from custody, or something. Begging off to use the women's, Elektra had slipped off on her own to wander the halls, and barring intervention of anyone along the way, she finds herself, somehow, in the athletics section of the Triskelion. And, as luck would have it, a semi-familiar face is present. She watches for a time, standing in shadows long enough to assess the man before stepping out and making her way closer. "Interesting. Good technique. Strength. Your equipment is beyond par. I'd hate to be the one you're upset at. Then again, maybe I am." Not.. that she sounds even the remotest bit worries about that.
James Barnes	He puts out a hand to still the swing of the bag, a gesture with a strange sort of gentleness. Surprised, but not startled, exactly. There's that expression he has that isn't a smile, but is the suggestion of it, just the slightest cant of the muscles around eyes and mouth. "Why would I be upset with you?" The idea seems to genuinely confuse him.
Elektra Natchios	There's the faintest of laughs by Elektra as she considers an answer to why he might be upset with her. "It's been my experience that most don't appreciate my form of.. conversation." She shrugs. "You're an interesting man. I wish I'd had more time to regard your activity back there." She had been rather more than single-minded at the time. "I do believe when last we met introductions were sparse." Her own smile for him is cool, not a thing that truly reaches her eyes. Not that he'd know it, but such things seldom do, though they do more than they once had. "Elektra Natchios." Nearly perfunctory at this point given he'd been part of the team retrieving her from the NYPD.
James Barnes	There's that puzzled cant to his brows. "I dunno, seemed like an interesting format for discussion to *me*," he retorts, with a little grin. "Nah, not me." A beat, and he leaves the bag to pace towards her, holding out his human hand. "I'm James Barnes. I generally go by Bucky, though. Pleased to meet you, Miss Natchios."
Elektra Natchios	"Elektra," she corrects swfitly and easily. "Ms. Natchios wears a business suit or looks bored to tears at gala events. I hardly think this qualifies as either." Now she does smile, something that lights up the blue of her eyes and betrays some of the spirit of the woman within. "I thought it was rather an interesting discussion myself. I have no doubt Saki will have other words to say to me, but until then I am feeling rather more than satisified with the outcome. I confess, I'm surprised your Agent May wasn't more horrified that I destroyed the money. She seems an interesting sort." His hand is taken, and given a shake. She has exactly the sort of firm shake you'd expect of her, along with more than a few callouses you wouldn't. "Care to make this conversation rather more interesting?"
James Barnes	"We're working for the government here. A smoking pile of millions is small potatoes," Buck's voice is rueful. "Elektra it is, then. And Agent May....they broke the mold when they made her." His hand is broad and capable - he's got a gunman's calluses. The question makes him cock his head. "How d'you mean?" he wonders.
Elektra Natchios	"How? Well, I did interrupt your workout." Elektra leaves it at that. Her gaze drifts over the rest of the room before wandering back to Bucky. "She seems the sort I might wish to know better." If only in the 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' sense, Elektra having a keen appreciation for never underestimating the people you were working with or against, and, frankly, when it came to AGent May, Elektra was curious. "Perhaps another day." For her own part, Elektra's callouses don't speak of guns, but they do speak of weapons, and something else.
James Barnes	There are signals crossing there, for sure. That stitch of confusion between his brows deepens. The comment about May, specifically.....surely he's misreading that. "She's hard to get to know," he says, lightly. "Very....guarded. But kind, in her way." Witness exhibit 1 here on the Island of Misfit Toys. "So....how do you know the Demon Lawyer, then?"
Elektra Natchios	Elektra nods of the explanation of May. "I've worked with her in the past, not that she knows it." Another of those easy shrugs from Elektra. "I was the Fist that Rules the Hand. I had need of getting information out discretely, and before certain matters came to pass. I'm not sure if she's entirely made the connections yet." It was likely May had, but it didn't really matter one way or another. There's a smile that lights upon her lips as well as her voice when she speaks of Matt, and in particular how she knows him. "Oh, we go back years. He and I met in university. I believe if you ask his partner I'm the reason he failed Spanish." There's a fondness that softens her as she speaks of this. "We were together for a time until we found we had irreconcillable differences." Where she was smiling just moments before, now her features are flat. Expressionless as she ponders where the story goes from there, or more rightly, how much of the story she reveals.
James Barnes	"You were willing to do things he wasn't," Buck says, and it's very nearly a sigh. "I bet. Right?" He's got that rueful look, the pale eyes a little vague. How many arguments has he had with Steve Rogers?.....and Matt has that aura to him. God save the world from self-righteous Irish Catholic boys from New York.
Elektra Natchios	Elektra's lips flit over amusement that, surprisingly, reaches her eyes while still remaining chill. "I kill people, Bucky. I'm an assassin by profession if you don't count my day job, and even that I've only recently picked up. Let us just say that Matthew and I didn't see eye to eye on that matter." Because, of course, Bucky is right, that had been the point of contention between them. Matt believing every life was not only sacred, but redeemable, and Elektra? Well, Elektra hadn't cared. There was always a price to her services, and even when she wasn't paid, at the time, she'd not cared to quibble over such things as redemption.
James Barnes	Now there's answering amusement, in turn. "What's your day job? And how long have you been an assassin?" He is curiously untroubled by this confession on her part. As if she'd just admitted to being an accountant and not a contract killer. He sighs. "Matt sounds like a buddy of mine."
Elektra Natchios	"By day I run Hellas International. Though there was a time I was nothing more than a spoiled debutante spending my father's fortune hand over fist. Or so the papers said." She chuckles. "I also briefly ran the Hand." She pauses to consider how long she'd been the other. "That's a difficult question. I killed my first man when I was eleven. But I'd been training for that for years. My mentor was not pleased. I'd not been meant to kill that one, but in truth what more did he expect? He'd been the one training me for exactly that. We parted ways shortly after I'd met Matthew. Again, disagreement in principles. But I'd been plying my trade for years by then." A cant of head towards the man. "You?"
James Barnes	Winter Soldier splays his human hand over his chest. "Me? SHIELD agent, now. I was an assassin for an organization called HYDRA. But it wasn't a job in the sense of a profession you do for pay. Didn't have much choice in the matter - I was a soldier, a sniper, specifically. But our enemies got me, and turned me into their puppet." He's matter of fact about it - no self-pity in his tone. Not even any particular horror. It's day time, he's pleasantly tired from a workout. The shadows have retreated a little. And now he has the world's fiercest Englishwoman as a room-mate, proof against nightmares.
Elektra Natchios	Elektra nods, the gesture rather succinct, but also one of understanding. "I know Hydra. Though they weren't my largest concern." Quietly, "I was raised from a young age to be an answer to a Prophecy. If I'd failed to be what they thought my life would have been very different. I can't say what it would have been. But my father's murder set me firmly on the path that was wanted. At the time I was too angry to care. I would have done anything they asked to get revenge." She makes a sound that is almost a sigh. Almost. "The thing is you can do a thing for all the right reasons and still end with the same results. They wanted a killer - all of them. It didn't matter to them that I was a little girl. What mattered was that portents said I was the one. I was alone in the world, and circumstance had made me ripe for the bending and breaking." Elektra shrugs, her tones taking on a clipped matter of factness. "I won though. I refused to be the weapon for either side. And now I'll end the cycle. They did their job too well."
James Barnes	Now she gets kind of an amazed blankness from him, lips pressing together in a thin line. It might be to keep them from trembling. Or smiling. Or even laughing. Bucky looks at her for a silent while that's a few beats too long. "I think we should form a support group, maybe," hesays, apparently quite serious. "I mean, that's a thing people do now. And I know at least one other ex-assassin...."
Elektra Natchios	That does take Elektra aback, "A support group?" Because she hadn't thought of such a thing. What she had thought of was gathering a select group to herself to recreate and rebrand the Chaste into a defiant answer to what had been done to her, seeking out those who would twist young minds and making them pay. "I'm not sure I follow?" Because support groups were not a thing she knew. What Elektra knew was dark alleys and fists in faces. Sais into sides. The swift twist of a neck, and the crumple of a body to the ground. That she's sincerely curious is more than evident, the woman showing rather more true animation since the conversation had begun.
James Barnes	"I mean, no, it's not exactly the same, but....it's similar. What we've been through. And I know at least someone else who has. Three of us....that's a group. Maybe. I mean, yeah, revenge, I intend to personally break a lotta heads but....they do say that the best revenge is living well. And imagine a group of assassins working together." He's even got a little of Steve's earnestness going on. "The world'd be terrified of us. And your enemies may be expecting you coming, but they won't expect me to be there along with, right?"
Elektra Natchios	"Oh, I do like the idea of that.." Elektra's voice drifting off into a richly altoed drawl. "There's something satisfying about the thought of making others pay for their mistakes." And, as it had hit him, it hits her, this sudden realization that their lives had taken a crooked, but parallel, journey. "I'm not sure others would call that a support group, but I am more than a little interested." She chuckles. "Mind you, I may have to neglect to tell Matthew. He gets rather.. mm, how shall we put it.. Well, let us say that the small matter of my proclivities is one we avoid talking about. It does create less tension in the relationship. Though now I'm curious who your self-righteous friend is." Because it was almost too amusing that they both had one. Something of a counterbalance, it would seem.
James Barnes	Now it's the full grin, the one that lights up his face with a kind of wicked cheerfulness. "Big, blond guy named Steven Rogers," he says, eyes bright. Waiting on her reaction. "I feel like he'd get along real well with the Joisey Devil there."
Elektra Natchios	Elektra laughs a full on laugh that surrounds the pair. "Oh my. I'm just imagining we need to keep the pair apart lest they form a support group. Though can you imagine? Tea and cookies. Little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. The pleases and thank-yous. It would practically be Canadian."
James Barnes	"Maybe we should have them meet up. I feel like Steve might need someone who thinks like he does. We'll have to set up a play date, like the way you meet up with other dog owners at the dog park." A fond glance is cast at Lili, who thumps her tail, cheerfully.
Elektra Natchios	That laughter remains, though it's only a gesture in her features, "A playdate for them? While we go off and do other things. Where exactly does one leave their rather more ethically inclined partners and friends while they wander off to make pointed statements about their displeasure?" Then she laughs again, another of those true laughs. "I wonder what the going rate of payment is for adultminding and keeping them out of our hair while we're otherwise engaged. I think I could be convinced to cover that." It's truly hard to tell just how serious she is about that suggestion.
James Barnes	"Diner," Buck says, nodding firmly. "Steve eats like a horse. Or....depending on how hard the Devil trains, here. Steve has access to the Triskelion. He can even take care of himself....sometimes. I should ask Steve's girl."
Elektra Natchios	Elektra's lips press a fine line of mirth, "I'd say ask Matthew's girl, but that would be me." She doesn't look the least bit sheepish about that, either. "Matt likes to hang out at Josies - a bar. You may know of it. But I'm thinking he might be convinced to stop by here, especially if you can convince your Steve that perhaps he might wish to talk to Matt about me. Just to be reassured I'm okay as a person, you know. AFter all, I do have rather a nefarious past to overcome." There's a simple movement that mimics a shrug. "That buys us one evening. If they get along, perhaps they'll be a self-propagating system and we won't have to consider how next to encourage them to meet up. But we're clever. I'm certain we can think of other reasons if the need arises."
James Barnes	"I've taken Steve there a time or two. He likes it," Buck's nodding, pleased at the idea. They can ....well, not manipulate, but steer, maybe, these two friends together. "And yeah, I imagine they'd have a lot to talk about."