thefirststark | Mixed Muses: The Morning After

"I hope it wasn't a good movie. Or did you just get back to it later?" Once in a while, time slides ahead a bit for him. When it's least convenient.

"The mansion is where the school is?"

The door to the lake and the woods awaits.

"I wasn't there to see the movie," she says, stepping around the obstacles between them and the door with relative ease. "It was hot and I thought I'd go inside."

She smiles at the notion of it, though. Even for her the idea of taking refuge in a dark, cool theater is kind of funny--if only because movies have been made about people who do what she does to one extent or another. "And yes, the mansion is the school. It used to be the Professor's house...1407 Graymalkin Lane, Salem Center, New York." Her tone is playful as she recites. It's not an address she ever thought she'd live at.

"I assume it's pretty quiet up that way?" The suburbs outside NYC tend to be, well, dull. "My Long Island compound is surrounded by potato farms."

It's nippy out, but sunny.

"Oh, it's boring," she says, half in agreement. "But it's far enough out of the way so people don't much bother us."

Alisa turns her face towards the sun for a moment, smiling through the wind. "How did you know you wanted to build airplanes and fly?"

"It comes from my grandfather. He saw one of the first planes ever built in flight, and decided that was the future. Stark Industries was once Stark Aviation.

"He taught me everything." Up to a point, of course.

"He sounds interesting."

"It depends on who you ask. I think he was amazing. My father thinks his father was a dreamer who squandered his opportunity to amount to something in the automotive industry." He looks at the sky. It would be a wonderful day for flying.

She chuckles. "My dad never talked much about his parents, but I remember my mom's father always wanted me to be a librarian."

She can't imagine herself doing that. "I wonder what he'd think of me now."

"I guess it depends on whether he could accept you for you." The way Howard imagines he has. "And whether he really wanted you to be a librarian that badly."

"I don't know if he would have. I haven't seen him in a while."

"He's still alive?"

"My grandfather? Oh, yeah, he is," she nods. "I haven't seen my grandparents since I was little. Maybe six or seven."

She looks over at Howard and considers. "I don't think they'd like that I'm basically good at spying. It's...what my abilities let me do," Alisa says, not the most comfortable with the subject, but far from embarrassed about it.

"Just like mine let me help win the war. I am not sure how proud I am of some of the things I helped create. But it was necessary, and I was good at it." And he is still at it, after all.

"I haven't really done anything much with it, other than listening to people."

She stops near one of the trees that's tall enough to have a good view of the lake, and points up to a thick branch. "Think you can climb up to there?"

That's a bit of a topic change. But he can deal with that.

"I haven't climbed a tree in a long time. I did do some mountain climbing before the war, though." He studies the tree before trying.

Just because she's not actively embarrassed by it doesn't mean she wants to really talk about it. Alisa grins as she jumps up to swing from one of the lower branches, pulling herself up and gaining a somewhat steady footing, hand pressed against the bark.

He follows. And finds that he is perhaps a bit out of shape. Ironic that a man affiliated with the army has no time for exercise.

She does this quite often herself; the garden and grounds are her favorite places at the mansion. She just watches her shoelaces dangle for a long, quiet moment before speaking up.

"So...if I went with you through your door, do you think you'd want me to be invisible?" She doesn't remind him that she could still talk to him and no one would be any the wiser.

He struggles to get a good grasp, and uses that as an excuse to be quiet while he thinks.

"It might make things easier. Less questions. But it wouldn't be fair to you."

Alisa almost says exactly what she thinks for a moment: that nothing about where he comes from is going to be fair to her.

"And if I'm visible, how is that going to affect you?" If people talk, if someone sees her not entirely remembering that they can't really act on anything discovered or done in the Bar at the end of the cosmos. She assumes he's following her through that train of thought as she watches him.

"I would have to explain who you are. And we don't have many colored people at my firm." He pauses. "That sounds awful."

"It doesn't sound as bad as you think it does," she says, not really angry. Not even a little angry if she's honest, because she knows in some aspect what hiring colored people would do to a firm like Stark Industries in the decade Howard's living in currently.

"I think it might be better if I stayed invisible," Alisa decides out loud. "It's not like you can say I'm your long-lost relative." Or whatever it is people use as an excuse to not say something worse.

"And I can't say you were an army buddy, like Gabe Jones." He finally reaches the branch she's on.

She just chuckles at that one and offers him a hand to steady himself. "You can't really say much about me," Alisa murmurs. "At least not out loud."

It's probably a good thing she doesn't mind that.

"Do you think of yourself as a soldier? I mean in the 'running around spying makes you a soldier' sense?"

The view from here is nice. In many ways.

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