Moving In (Roxie)

[the_next_avenger]

The night after their discussion, Joe followed Roxie's instructions to get into the building and headed upstairs to the apartment to check it out. He politely declined the doorman's offer of assistance as he didn't want to frighten the poor guy with the weight of his bags or their contents. Between all the clothing and weapons, Joe knew Uncomfortable Questions might be asked so he avoid the whole situation by carrying his own things.

 

Once he got through the door, Joe turned on some lights and checked the place out. Roxie had really good taste; the place was furnished much better than the places he'd been in the last few years. He didn't even see any rats scurrying once the lights were on. The cleanliness of the place made him realize just what kind of dumps he'd been inflicting on himself since he left Colorado Springs.

He sought the nearest empty bedroom and found it, sitting his bags down and taking off his coat.  He was about to figure out what he'd sleep on when he remembered something about a rooftop garden. Now, he had to see it.

He found the access to the rooftop and stepped out, looking around at the place. Whatever he'd expected this place to be, this was so much more. Joe simply walked around a bit, getting an idea of the space. He could put a heavy bag right over there, in the corner, if Roxie didn't mind...

for a moment, Joe let all of his worries and trepidations about the world fall away and he stood near the edge of the building with his head titled back, eyes closed and just enjoyed the sounds of New York by night.

Comments

[the_next_avenger]

"Yeah, I kept it. I'm a military history buff--well, I should say a history buff. Military history is just my favorite portion of it. But yeah, it was in my room at Colorado Springs." Joe said.

He didn't mention that he would often take it out and look at it when he was feeling especially down and missing home. Usually he'd call his mother right after that, only to hang up the phone before she could pick up.

The owner came back for their food orders and Joe again waited for Roxie to order before ordering shawarma for himself.

"What's the craziest thing you've ever done. hero-wise?" he asked suddenly.

[avengingwarbird]

Well, there was that time she'd made out with a Doombot to make it malfunction, but Roxie wasn't about to bring up that particular story.

Then there was the time that Roxie and Bruce had mingled powers while fighting a dragon. She might have enjoyed that a little bit too much.

That story certainly wasn't being told.

Was it?

Roxie paused for a long moment and then took a long drink of her water.

And then she told him both of the stories.

"What about you?"

[the_next_avenger]

Joe laughed aloud at the story about the Doombot, asking her to tell it once more. Not because it was unbelievable, oh no. Quite the opposite. He believed that Roxie could make a Doombot malfunction and now he was tempted to ask Colonel Fury if he could borrow an LMD for "field testing" to see if Roxie could make one of those meltdown, too.

Joe was an easy-to-please guy in the company of a beautiful woman. He was pretty sure that the LMD didn't stand a chance.

"I would feel bad for that Doombot if not for two things. One, it was a Doombot. Two, it was the luckiest Doombot in existence for the kind of send off it got." Joe said, unable to keep the dorky smile off his face.

When she told him about Bruce and her mingling powers, he couldn't help but be a tad envious of his friend. Bruce was an awesome guy, though he was pretty sure Bruce didn't always know that. The lucky guys who got to know Roxie continued. An odd thought crossed Joe's mind but he pushed it down because he had no business thinking such thoughts.

"Okay, dragons and Doombots. You might have just won story time for crazy stories. Me, on the other hand...my stories involve more of a 'crazy-stupid' kind of feel." Joe said.

And so he told about a recent time when he went after a criminal boss in Texas who lured him into a warehouse, only to blow up the building once he was inside.

"It's not the first time someone's tried to blow me up. Oh and you know how they say don't drink the water in Mexico? Yeah, don't go swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, either. It was horrible. I knew it was a trap, but I didn't really have a choice. I still got the guy later but...yeah." he said.

"And then there was the time I fought a motorcycle gang. These guys were pretty bad and into everything from extortion, to coke-muling, to gun-running. Fifteen-on-two. There was me and another guy who used to run with them It was in Southern Missouri, a little place called Loving, just after I got kicked out of Colorado Springs." Joe said.

"They had us dead to rights, Roxie. We almost didn't get out." he said, reflecting back on it.

"Then Tommy, the guy I was working with...he changed." Joe said, clearly remembering something that disturbed him. "I don't know what happened, Roxie. I thought he was a mutant, or a demi-god, but I've never seen anything like it. He wiped them out single-handledly, Roxie. I've never seen one person leave that much destruction in its wake." he said.

"I tried to bring him in after but he was on his bike and gone before I could. I told the cops what I saw and got the hell out of town. I tried looking for Tommy after that, but I never found him." he said finally.

"Well, now that we got that out of the way...if you had twenty-four hours left to live, what would you do with it?"

[avengingwarbird]

That was Roxie for you. Always doing the crazy, impulsive thing, running free and wild with her emotions.

An old boyfriend had once told her that she'd never be tamed. He'd been right for the most part, but no one ever really factored tragedy into the equation, did they?

At some point during the conversation, when Joe had been speaking about everything he'd been through - attempts at being blown up, the gang stuff, Tommy - Roxie had reached across the table and taken Joe's hands in her own, running her thumbs - smooth, soft, and silky despite all of the war they had seen - gently over his knuckles.

She wondered if he was still looking for Tommy, or where Tommy might be right now.

Possibly how much of a threat the man posed.

You. That was the first answer that came to Roxie's mind when Joe asked the question. It wasn't an answer she could freely give, no matter how much she would have liked to. "I've spent so much time partying, fighting demons and aliens and robots, you know?" she asked. "If it came to that, and if I knew I only had that long, I'd spend it with friends and family - the people who meant the most to me. But I wouldn't ever tell them I was dying, because that would...discolour...the day." She gently pressed her lips together. "And at some point, I'd put in a request to my Olympian family for a swift resurrection because, let's be honest. No one ever really stays dead for long in our world," she smiled. "How about you?"

[the_next_avenger]

When Roxie took his hands, Joe didn't pull away. The feeling was nice and one he hadn't felt in quite some time. He wasn't even sure he could let someone get that close to him anymore, not after the years of avoiding it after Melissa's death. The death that he caused.

Joe hadn't seen Tommy since then, but he'd heard stories of the thing that Tommy became and knew that his failure to stop him had caused other deaths, too. He was a failure at heroing as far as he saw. People got hurt or died because he wasn't on his A-game.

"I'd apologize to my parents because they deserve it after everything I've put them through. I'd also make sure my friends understood that I respect them and that I know they'll get past it. And I'd make sure Sammy wasn't working on a last minute effort to save me when she could be working on something else. I know she would." Joe said.

"But in truth, I think I'd spend the remaining hours with someone really important to me just so I know that when I go, I was with someone who mattered at the end." he said.

He'd thought about the answer to that for a long, long time so it was easy for him to answer the question.

"Okay. Your turn on the next question. I feel like I've been talking more than listening." he said.

But he didn't let go of Roxie's hands, though his own were calloused and rough from years of fighting, a literally clawing and scraping by in some ways.

[avengingwarbird]

"Maybe it's because you're worth saving," Roxie said softly. "I mean, look at you, Joe. You're doing what the rest of us should - helping the innocents who really need it. Yes, we fight the big threats, but you make more of a long-term difference. We just...deal with the threat of the week."

She squeezed his hands again, feeling their gentle roughness against the tough silkiness of her own. "She's not the only one who'd try to save you," Roxie added. "I mean...you know." Her brow furrowed. "We all care about you, no matter how long you've been away."

There was, on the tip of her tongue, another question that Roxie wanted to ask, but it wasn't her question to ask. She wanted to know who that important someone would be to Joe.

"What's the darkest thought you've ever had?"

Yeah, because that wasn't a zinger.

[the_next_avenger]

"When you ask about 'darkest'...are you asking about the darkest thought I'd ever had about me? Or the darkest one I've ever had about someone else?" he asked her.

[avengingwarbird]

"Both?" Roxie asked. "I want to hear both." She leaned back as their orders arrived, smiling warmly at the owner as the tantalizing scent of roasted chicken drenched in amba sauce wafted into her nose.

Her stomach lightly rumbled. Gods, but that smelled good.

[the_next_avenger]

"The darkest thought I've ever had about me is probably the darkest one you could go to. I mean, almost everyone wonders at some point whether or not the world would be better off without them. I was at my lowest back then, Roxie. My girlfriend had just died because of me, her brother was in jail and he blamed me for her death. Yeah, I was crushed.

There were a couple of times I got hurt a lot worse than I should when I was on the streets because I was hoping that someone would take me down. It took a few people to build me back up. I still blame myself for what happened to her but I decided to use that to push me to help as many people as I could. Sometimes, I even do a good job at it." he said.

"Most women would be backing away very slowly right now after being told something like that." he said, smiling gently at her.

"The darkest thought toward another person? Melissa's brother. I wanted to kill him something awful for everything he's done. There were a few crooks along the way that I really wanted to skip the legal process with but keep them alive while I..." Joe stops mid-sentence because he can barely bring himself to say the word "torture".

His father would never condone such a thing and he was taught better than that, but some of the really bad guys he'd run into along the way deserved that at a minimum.

When the food came, Joe took a moment to compose himself, take a deep breath and smell the food, which made his stomach rumble, too. When the owner noticed their drinks were low, she brought them a bit more and then left them in peace.

"What about you? I wouldn't be surprised if the people that hurt you got a starring role in some of your less pleasant thoughts." he said.

[avengingwarbird]

"Most women aren't a quarter Kree and half Olympian," Roxie smiled. Honestly, as far as Roxie knew, she was the only one with that specific genetic make-up, which certainly made her one-of-a-kind.

"The thing is, we all have dark thoughts and dark impulses. After the thing with the Kree, I wanted to destroy the entire race. There are nights where I still want to charge up there as a fully realized Olympian and destroy their entire civilization for trying to use me as their brood mare," Roxie said. "How could I not? There's nothing...there's no bigger insult than..." she shook her head. Of all the things she had ever thought she'd mean to the Kree, being their brood mare was not one of them. "For what it's worth, Joe, I'm glad you never followed through with that dark place about yourself. I know I might not have learned about it, since you weren't in touch, but I'm sure I'd know that the world was an emptier place without you."