the sun in my disgrace [OPEN + MINGLE]

[rangerbecket]

WHO: Raleigh Becket
WHERE: 6I village, Inn
WHEN: 21 August - mid morning
OPEN TO: All + Mingle
WARNINGS: Put on your Eclipse Glasses TBD

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Raleigh had been on his way back from his normal morning routine of checking his traps and fishing for a while when he noticed the sun wasn't quite the way it normally looked - he'd caught a glance at the reflection and saw that the sun, normally perfectly round, was looking a little like a lemon that had gotten beaten up at the grocery store. Huh. An eclipse. He hasn't seen one since he was in Ranger training and he hadn't gotten a good look at that one because he hadn't been directly in the path of it (and, obviously, he'd been preoccupied).

This one, though, looks like it's just starting so Raleigh has time to go to the Inn and tell the people there that there's an eclipse starting and they should get something to try and look at it. He's not exactly sure of the science behind it but he remembers being a kid and making something with a box and earlier he'd done pretty well with the water. Maybe they can take pots outside with water and just look at the reflections? Might work. Maybe, too, one of the scientists has a better idea of how to get a look at the thing.

For his part, it's just something that's different from the norm. Raleigh hopes it's not a sign that the sun's going to start moving backward or staying up all month like it had a few months back and that it's just a perfectly normal, natural event. After earthquakes and people getting sick with some kind of crazy illness, it was good to just have something...mundane to focus on.

Comments

[unmakeme]

Clint is the only one she trusts to actually know why she chose the side she did, and why she switched. It was never about the politics or the Accords, it was about buying time, about keeping their found family together. Only Clint could possibly understand what that means to Natasha. Only he could know the lengths she'd be willing to go to to not lose them all. Joke ended up being on her, of course, because she ended up losing them all anyway.

She slips her glasses onto her face, knowing how ridiculous they make her look but not caring much. Incredibly limited time and all that, and she's still proud of them. "If Lenny Bruce come gasping up out of that fountain, I am officially done." She ties a little strip of fabric over the loops of wire at the back, securing them behind her head so they wont' fall off. Then she holds up another strip. "Want me to do yours?"

[pretendtoneedme]

He'd known from the beginning. Hell, if he'd still been on the team, he might have even agreed with her, even though he'd hated the Accords themselves. But, Clint had to admit that he'd mostly hated what he could see the Accords becoming, especially if one of their "handlers" was going to be that-dickbag-Ross, because that first version at least seemed like it had good intentions and wasn't really all that dissimilar from the way they'd worked under S.H.I.E.L.D. and the WSC - but with the agency and Fury, they'd always had that only point of contact and control, and Fury was always, always on their side and mostly agreed with their tactics. The WSC had been a bunch of idiots sometimes (trying to nuke Manhattan being the biggest example), but Fury had been able to head them off. Now with the entire UN leading them, there would have been so many, many new voices they'd have to listen to and guaranteed weren't going to agree on how to run things. Nat had desperately been trying to salvage a situation to find the best possible outcome for the team, the one that let them retain as much control as they could while they continued working together, and the logical "agent" portion of his brain agreed with her tactics. The emotional part of him, however, had entirely been on board with Cap's idea of "fuck this I'm out this is gonna go down in flames." It'd just been an entirely different set of flames than they'd anticipated.

"At least he wouldn't be afraid." Like he could let that one pass since she offered it up, and he gave her a smirk with the quip. She'd probably elbow him for that, but he didn't care. "Sure, go ahead - maybe this'll just be a passover and not some signal of something else screwing up." He could hope, at least.

[unmakeme]

The Accords would have failed no matter what, of course. Natasha had hoped they'd be able to take it down together from the inside, though. Or at least to have a better exit strategy in place. Still, road to hell and good intentions and all that. Who's to say it would have worked? Who's to say it wouldn't have all blown up in a different and possibly worse way?

He makes his joke, and elbow him she does, because that was horrible and he needs to feel bad. "He might be the only one," she mutters, wrapping the cloth around the ends of the glasses and tying them carefully to his head. What if the experiment is just to see how much it takes to break them? What if that's all their captors want to know?

"The last eclipse I saw was... two thousand twelve? Australia. I had to smoke glass to look at it then, too. November, hot as a furnace. Do you remember that? I thought you were going to throttle me for starting a fire."

[pretendtoneedme]

You gave him the opening, Nat. You left yourself open for more sort-of-lyric-quoting. The elbow's something he's used to - it's not nearly the first time she's shut him up - and he knows it's coming so he just goes with it, ooofing in reaction and letting her drive the air from his kidney. "It's like the less-fun, less-space-living version of being in Mystery Science Theater 3000. Seeing how long it takes for us to crack, and how much it'll take. The experiment needs some good test cases, even if they didn't conk us on the noggin and shoot us into space." Their thoughts are going down similar paths, but that's nothing new for them. It's been that way for years now.

Also she's probably going to kill him for that reference, but what else is new.

"I was gonna throttle you for staring into the fire to smoke 'em." Clint remembers that mission very well - only his second after his long recuperation from the shit Loki had put him through, and he'd only felt even halfway confident about it because he'd been with Nat. At least getting to go to Australia meant missing a lot of the early-winter nastiness - and, coincidentally, in the path of the total eclipse that had passed over the Southern hemisphere. Clint'd put any amount of money on Fury having done that deliberately for his benefit after a month of isolation and three of counseling, basically bribing him to go on a mission that'd been not so serious in the long run with a rare treat. "We were dragging each other up to Cairns to make sure we saw the full thing for two days before that. Got there too late to find any glasses in the stores."

[unmakeme]

He's got to be expecting the second elbow that comes at his ribcage, but she's smiling.

"It was worth it, and it was beautiful." She hadn't been sure they'd make it in time, and when no one had glasses available, she'd absolutely been ready to steal a pair off of a child for Clint. She might have, if he could have found a . child to steal from. Most people had come equipped with pinhole viewers and reminding someone that miraculous things still happened in the world by letting them look at a miracle through a hole in a cardboard box was so not good enough. "At least that time I had dust goggles to start with, not broken bits of an ancient computer."

She turns her face carefully toward the sun, in increments. It's good. "Don't get me wrong. These work, and I'm brilliant, but we're not exactly stylish at the moment." Not stylish, but together. It counts for something. It counts for a lot. Without looking over at him, she reaches out to make contact again. Though, this time it's not her elbow and his soft spots, but her fingers and his. Shut up, she totally doesn't want to hold your hand, old man.

[pretendtoneedme]

Oh he's totally expecting it, because he knows her. He knows exactly how she's going to react to that. It's not like he minds her reacting that way, even if he might have a bruise forming from the amount of elbow hitting him, because she's engaged and "with" him in a way that was so hard to peel out of her when he'd brought her in. Nat's an amazing person who all too often doesn't believe that about herself, and he always likes seeing her react like this, even if he suffers for it in the process.

"Yeah - sure was." Clint would've objected to her stealing glasses from a child - they probably could've found someone who'd be willing to share their glasses - but in the end it hadn't come down to that. They'd gotten what they wanted without robbing anyone, which was always a plus if sometimes necessary. Standing here with the cobbled frames literally tied to his head, watching the eclipse move towards apogee, it's almost like they're back in Australia for the moment. Almost. "Cooper and I went up to Canada to watch the partial in 2014. It was awesome, but it wasn't the same." Still awe-inspiring, still a miracle, but just on a slightly lower level. Probably too many movies and TV shows with shots where something's passing in front of the sun or the moon has made that particular image more rote than it should be. But he doesn't object, or even look down, when Nat's fingertips touch his. He's well-versed in her little ways of non-communication, and he turns his hand to catch hers, tightening his grip briefly to indicate he understands what she's trying to say. He doesn't make a verbal response, since one's not needed.

[unmakeme]

"How did I not know that?" she asks, her face turned to the sun as well. Not that she's mad. Just wondering. "Cooper is supposed to share everything with me. I'm his favourite adult." He had mentioned a camping trip, actually, just not the eclipse. It's something to talk about, though, something that doesn't really matter on the surface to hide what does matter being said beneath it. It's what they're best at. Talking without talking.

Thinking about Cooper hurts. Thinking about all three of the kids hurts. Even her namesake, who's barely old enough to be interesting, she'd give just about anything to watch him sleep and drool right now. Thinking about Laura hurts. It's an important kind of hurt, though. It's the pain of missing something vital, of knowing what you're holding on for, what you're fighting to get back to. "There's one next year, cuts right across the U.S. from Washington to Florida," she says, softly. "We should go. All of us." Because of course they're getting home. It might take them a while, but they're going to get there.