thisavrou_log | It's not paranoia [closed]

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It's not paranoia [closed]

Who: Natasha Stark and Adrien Arbuckal
When: May 24
Where: Adrien's home
What: A continuation of their text exchange
Warnings: Will add as needed

There are a lot of things 'I won't talk about this in the open' can mean, and very few of them are good. Natasha barely knows the doctor at all, but from the little they've spoken, they seem to have similar enough mindsets that she has her suspicions. But honestly, the goal here is to get as much information as possible. If she's going to be dealing with this thing, whatever it is, she needs to know everything. Anything this man is willing to share, she'll take.

As promised, his home is not particularly hard to find. It also is an actual orchard, which makes the city girl in her arch an eyebrow, but it's barely a sidenote to the rest of the mess running circles through her head. She's much more concerned with making her way up to the door and knocking lightly, mind already ten steps ahead and working through what the coming conversation might possibly be. It's a bad habit of hers, but now is not the time to try to work on it.

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The first sound Natasha would hear, on the other side of the door, is the scrabble of large claws on wood. This would be followed by a loud wuffling sound, like someone was sniffing the base of the door with eager interest.

Eventually there would come footsteps and then an aggrieved voice.

"Courser, knock it off and get out of the way." Followed by the sound of more scuffling and muttering. "Just fucking move. I've told you before it's rude to sniff strangers!"

Finally, after a couple of thuds, the door swung open. In the door way stood the doctor, his expression set in it's habitual scowl, particularly as he was sprawled, spread eagle between the doorjambs. He appeared to be trying to block the way from the odd, reptilian-feline creature trapped behind him. The animal was down on it's front paws attempting to stick it's muzzle between the doctor's legs, nostrils and whiskers working furious as it sucked up Natasha's scent.

Adrien looked pained.

"Hi." He said, in a simple tone, as if this was just ... a normal thing.

The sounds alone had gotten one of Natasha' eyebrows in the process of lifting, by the time the door had opened and she could take in the entire tableau, her expression was entirely one of arch amusement. The contrast between the tone of his voice and the look on his face probably would have been enough for a good undignified snort or two, but she was at least trying to be adult about this.

Mostly. "Dr Arbuckal, I presume?" The phrase slipped out before she could stop it, but Natasha was at least attempting to school herself into something straight-faced as she held out a hand. "Natasha Stark. We spoke before."

"Please, call me Adrien." He said, though something in his flat tone suggested the offer was made because he didn't like 'Dr. Arbuckal' rather than any sort of overly friendly politeness.

Turning he made a sharp hand gesture at the creature and this time the animal appeared to take his companion's request to heart. Giving Natasha one last sharp glance, Courser turned and slunk down the hallway. He'd find the back of the house and probably be gone out to hunt space rabbits before they got to the kitchen.

Speaking of which, Adrien waved for Natasha to follow him in that general direction.

"Stark. A relative of Tony Stark or just coincidence of names?"

And that was enough to wipe out any lingering traces of amusement in favor of a very slight grimace. Of course the conversation would start there.

Natasha was quiet for a moment as she followed Adrien inside, weighing her choices for how to respond. In the end, though, there was only one real option. This trip was all about sharing information, after all. Probably best to start off on the right foot.

"Related in the multiversal sense, or so I gather," Natasha said finally, her tone wry enough to be obvious even if he didn't happen to glance back to see the look on her face. "I guess that would make us siblings, a universe or so removed. But I haven't actually met him, so there's only so much I can presume."

The kitchen would be surprisingly homey done in warm woods, bright and airy. There was a scent of something apple like in the air and freshly made coffee.

Motioning for her to make herself at home on one of the three bar stools up by the island, Adrien walked over to poke at a large pot. He was trying his hand at apple sauce. For the sake of argument, this was batch number five.

"Multiversal sense." He repeated in a level tone. "So, dimension shenanigans?" Adrien turned and gave his head a slight shake. "Rhetorical question, you don't have to answer that. Tony and I shared quarters aboard the Moira, but I haven't seen him since we ended up planet-side. Coffee?"

"God, yes please," she said as she slipped onto one of the stools, watching Adrien with a sort of absent curiosity. Honestly, if all she got out of this was good coffee, Natasha would still probably call it a win.

"And something like that. I've dealt with the multiverse before but never quite on this scale. And the last alternate version of myself I ran into turned out to be evil, so." Another flash of a wry smile. They also hadn't been a he, but that hadn't seemed important at the time. "I'm going to guess that's not an issue here."

Well at least some things appeared constant across the family.

Adrien doesn't smile, but his lips quirk as he pulls down a clean mug and pours a fresh cup. Setting it in front of Natasha, it won't be hard to tell that the doctor brews his coffee bounceoffthewalls strength. As such he motioned towards what looks like a sugar bowl on the island and makes a vague wave of 'help yourself' to the cream in the fridge.

"Well, we are sitting upon a portal that appears to have limitless wormhole ability to tap into the infinite combinations of time and space," he said, pouring himself a cup of coffee and actually making use of the cream from the fridge. "The scale and scope should be impressive."

"And let that be a lesson to you," Natasha said with heavy irony as she picked up the cup and saluted him with it, "if anyone ever asks you to check out a mysterious portal For Science, tell them to go screw themselves." Yes, she was going to hold that over Reed's head for the rest of time. If she ever got back to harangue him about it. But that was a thought she buried by taking a curious sip without bothering to mess with the contents. She'd probably burnt her tastebuds out on worse years ago.

"But I'm gathering," she added after a moment of letting the caffeine settle, "that you've been around here for a while? For whatever value of 'here' you choose." Natasha hadn't exactly been chasing it down, but she'd heard enough mentioned of the Moira to gather that there had been some kind of 'before' the settling on this place. And some people were certainly more settled than others.

Adrien seemed to consider speaking to the whole 'mysterious portal' statement for a moment, but ultimately he discarded the impulse and sipped his coffee as he listened to Natasha's question.

"I've a bit of experience with the entire, multiple dimensions and time, theories being realities," he admitted. "From what I've been able to learn, my version of Earth is unlike any other version I've encountered people from, then I signed on to join an incredibly shady organization who were farming recruits of all various worlds, and that was all before I got snagged by the Ingress and pulled to the Moira.

Twice."

Odd how, when he tried to explain everything that had happened over the past four to five years, it ended up sounding like the only life he'd known. Home was a fading memory by now.

"The entire journey has been a combination of eye opening, life fulfilling and horrifying."

"I'll bet," Natasha said, her eyebrows having steadily climbed upwards as he'd listed everything out. It was an impressive collection. She kept her cup cradled in both hands, elbows planted against the counter, but her attention was entirely on Adrien. "You seem to be handling it well, though."

Well. He seemed paranoid as hell, but it was hard to tell how much of that was experience and how much was just him. Paranoia was occasionally the healthier reaction.

"Was there a reason everything decided to settle or was it one of those things that just happened?" Call her curious. Yes there was a point to this, but asking couldn't hurt.

For a brief moment Adrien wore a look that suggested he was dubious about just how well he was handling anything. But honestly, that was a path best not traversed on what was effectively a first meeting.

Not when they had more important topics of conversation to pursue.

Though he question threw him and his brows knitted in a bemused expression.

"A reason everything decided to settle? I don't understand the question."

Natasha paused with a blink and ran the sentence back through her head. Right. That was one of those things that had made sense only to her.

"Sorry," she said shaking her head. "I meant you all," she gestured as if to encompass the inhabitants of the whole planet, "were on a ship before, right? Why stop here?"

Oh.

Though Adrien had come to an uneasy, civil sort of tolerance for the whole situation, he still felt a kick to the gut as Natasha's words stirred up the memories.

He looked down the coffee in his hand, before exhaling a deep breath and setting it off to the side, then leaning back against the counter, hands gripping the edge. When he spoke, it was after a couple of false starts, as he tried to get the words right.

"We crashed the Moira," in the end he just went with direct. "The Moira housed a portable Ingress that allowed the entire ship to jump through time and space, just like we do no through the stationary Ingress here. Only ... as I said, it was an entire ship.

It was also apparently an abomination, in the eyes of the Savrii and given what happened aboard the Moira, the way it changed people and the way reality started to decay within, I can see their point. It wasn't stable.

Anyway your ... sibling and I found journals that allowed us and other members of the crew to decipher the language spilling out of the Ingress and ultimately plug in coordinates to the Moira's point of origin a place called the Midway Hub. We deliberately turned on the Ingress to jump the Midway Hub and we made it ... but the Moira was so unstable by that point that it was falling apart around us and ultimately crashed into the Midway Hub."

Fun times.

"It was beyond repair at that point and when we got to the Midway Hub facility, we found that the Savrii had come through and murdered the entire personnel of the facility in retribution for creating the Moira in the first part. Luckily their homicidal tendencies stopped there. Rather than kill us, then looked upon us as victims and offered us sanctuary here and the promise of trying to work out the signatures that would allow us to go home through the Ingress here."

There was moment or so of silence after he finished. "Ah," Natasha said finally, tone somewhat careful. Reality started to decay. Jesus. Well, she had asked, hadn't she. And it did explain quite a lot.

She sipped at her coffee again, partially because she needed it and partially to give her time to work through a response. Considering how on edge he seemed, the last thing she needed would be to say something stupid and end the conversation before it even started.

"Alright," she said as she set the cup all the way down onto the counter with a soft click. "So I can see why you didn't want to discuss anything publicly. We're here at their sufferance, aren't we? The Savrii."

"I don't discuss things publicly because I'm a paranoid bastard," Adrien corrected gently. "Particularly when I'm working on partial evidence that could lead people down the road to numerous paths of speculation."

Especially then.

"But yes, that would be an accurate statement of our relationship with the Savrii. Something a few of us appear to have forgotten," which was another matter entirely.

"However, the concerns we're here to discuss are the contagion, or whatever it proves to be and the possible threat it presents."

He straightened then and nodded towards a hallway. "If you're anything like your brother, you'll want to see the test results for yourself?"

The whole sibling thing was probably going to get weird eventually, but honestly Natasha couldn't think of a better descriptor for the moment. It was very much besides the point, anyway.

"I definitely wouldn't object," she said, sounding slightly surprised about it. For someone as paranoid as Adrien admitted to being, she'd expected more in the way of resistance in sharing what he had. Maybe she was just too used to cagey scientists trying to make sure no one else could publish first. Maybe she was something of a paranoid bastard herself.

"Biology isn't my strongest suit," Natasha added as she gathered herself to stand back up, "but I can try to follow along."

"I'll provide cliff notes," he offered, waiting in the doorway for Natasha to gather herself.

Once she was on her feet, he led the way through the house towards the side of it. Pushing open the door, it was kind of like stepping from one world and into another entirely.

While the house was classic farmhouse, surprisingly cozy (for a bachelor) and done in soft, very planet bound decor the clinic was like a small slice straight out of the technologically advanced Moira. Gleaming metal, highly technically capable equipment and storage devices, if Natasha had been wondering about the Moira, here was a small piece of her; preserved.

Adrien moved comfortably through the space, the sort of casual ownership that came from someone who had meticulously designed where every piece set. He motioned Natasha towards a simple, rolling stool as he walked over to a counter.

"I kept my notes hand written for a lot of this, though I have it backed-up on my device. Your brother set me into that habit when we were working with the journals. Most of this is Earth based, scientific based medical jargon. If there are some unfamiliar words, just point them out and I'll provide a definition."

As he spoke, he gathered two small pads of paper and walked over towards her, holding them out.

Natasha couldn't help but huff a laugh as she settled in as directed, feeling unmistakably like she was about to be given a school assignment. She'd never liked biology much then either, come to think of it. Too many uncontrollable variables.

"I promise to raise my hand and everything," she agreed, deadpan, as she reached out to take the papers from him. Hard copy, of course. It made sense, given the givens, but it didn't mean she had to like it.

"How many people have you shown this to?" Natasha found herself asking out of sort of absent curiosity as she flipped quickly through the pages. Trying to get a sense of the whole thing before she settled down to read it for real.

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It's not paranoia [closed]

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sorry about that, my brain skipped a few words

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