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[unquiets]

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"You've reached David. Leave a message after the tone."

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[unquiets]

Yeah, but you'd have said if the other Sokovians you grew up with ate cake batter.

It tastes like vanilla and butter, mostly.
Or chocolate and butter.

[carmesi]

Some might have.

I imagine it would have raw eggs. Butter's not a flavor.

[unquiets]

And uncooked flour.

You get butter flavored food, so...

[carmesi]

Butter cookies are actually baked.

( the thin line between things that wanda likes and dislikes, and thus considers the latter inexistent. )

Anyway, it's not important. We'll do the waffles together later.

[unquiets]

( what do butter cookies have to do with anything else, david is lost.

(except about the waffles.)
(still, "we will.") )

Okay.
Were you a baker in a past life?

[carmesi]

One of the roommates I had before was a cook.
I helped out in the kitchen sometimes. He also wrote down some of the recipes.

It's basically a pancake batter.

[unquiets]

That makes sense.

And up until yesterday, here I was thinking they just came frozen.

[carmesi]

Well. You can try them homemade and let me know what you think.

How long did you take medication for? You said the sugar helped.
I'm guessing it made the eating experience different.

[unquiets]

( there's a momentary pause at the question, enough that david doesn't even bother to point out that the sarcasm (light! but there) of his previous remark had been missed. reluctance, something a little uncomfortable and harder to name. )

I was a teenager.

( you can do the maths. )

There were a few different prescriptions.

[carmesi]

( that is a lot of years. you also cannot do sarcasm with wanda; she misses the point a lot. )

And how long since you've been without? Recently?

[unquiets]

A bit over a year.
Maybe closer to two.

( depending on how you look at it. )

[carmesi]

Okay. That's good.
Anyway, I was just curious. We don't need to talk about it more unless you want to.

[unquiets]

I don't.

( short, to the point. he could go into why, but he also — doesn't really want to. so. )

[carmesi]

( as far as wanda is concerned, he answered enough about it. she can figure out the why herself. )

Hydra didn't believe in medicating us before or after the experiments.
Just a lot of food and sleep deprivation depending on results.

What about drugs? Or is that another 'don't want to talk about it'?

[unquiets]

Was that to see how it affected your powers?

I did a lot of drugs for a while.

[carmesi]

I guess so. We did several tests before we interacted with the artifact they had. Fed us better after that, but sleep was difficult even if we had a scheduled sleep time.

( all the noise that wanda could hear; how slow time passed for pietro. )

Like babies, huh.

( anyway— )

I did some. As a teen.
One of the reasons we got into trouble with the police.

( escape the horrors from the outside world by blurring reality. suppose david wanted to forget the horrors from inside himself. )

[unquiets]

—The artifact?

( david doesn't think he needs to mention that sleep has been — was — challenging for him. )

'Sleeping like babies' always seems like a misnomer.

Some?

( a little wry. not quite amusement, but not far off. )

I wasn't a good person to know when I was using.

[carmesi]

A scepter. It contained an Infinity Stone.
One of six. Their powers transcend time and space.

( it's what thor had said. it's what she and vision talked about, sometimes. )

No, I don't know more about it. The memories I have of that time are blurry.
I told you: I remember going in to make contact with it. Next thing I remember, I was back in my cell and told I succeeded.

I wasn't dead, so I guessed as much.

( considering that other subjects had died. )

Nothing hard. Just— unlabeled pills and weed. A lot of drugs went through Sokovia while things were mostly lawless.

With what you were going through, I don't think you could blame yourself for using.
You've been clean since?

[unquiets]

What can they be used for?
Other than... What you went through.

( transcend time and space. sounds like an alternative to trying to find a time traveller, although—
probbaly not something that exists on his earth, given everything. )

Mm.
Doesn't excuse some of the choices I made.

Since Clockworks.

[carmesi]

I guess they manipulate things? I don't know. Thor would know, but.
He left to find out more. Maybe he told Steve if he ever came back.

( yes, thor. dwbi. )

The one Hydra had was the Mind Stone. It's now what gives life to a friend of mind back home. Makes him sentient.

( another dwbi. weirdly, this is not something she has felt compelled to talk with anyone else, worried of what it may bring up if she asked steve or clint directly. or bucky, even. there's no pressure in telling david, because he knows absolutely nothing about this. )

Clockworks, the hospital place? That definitely has massage learning classes?
I won't judge. I'm sure it wasn't without complications.

( this really is how they learn about each other. )

[unquiets]

Like, the god, Thor?

( there is, notably, a moment of what? that transitions into okay that transitions into— )

Was he an Avenger?

( there's a delay between responses that could be david trying to work out what 'gives sentience' looks like, what that means, or it could be him working out how (if) he wants to respond to that second part. or both.

(—is that why she mentioned about 'creating life'?)
(he'll come back to it, probably.) )

Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital, yes. I was lying. But there was dayroom time, bad films, and a lot of therapy broken up by however many doses of meds someone else decided you needed to be to be some level of not crazy.
Do you mean psych wards or being a junkie wasn't without complications?

[carmesi]

From Asgard. Yes. And yes.
We fought together against the thing that destroyed my home. He does use a hammer and thunder.

( bet what he thought about her 'work' and 'the avengers' is different from what she's portraying here. )

I know that you lied about the massages.
Six years, the same schedule?
I meant the choices that you made.

[unquiets]

Gods don't exist where I'm from. Not like that.

( does he consider himself a god? sort of. not like that and not in the way that farouk means it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't consider himself—

—well. it's complicated. )

Meaningfully? Same enough.
That's easy to say when you don't know what they were.

[carmesi]

Technically he isn't from Earth. And he's only a god because of the powers that he has.

( but, this isn't a debate about that. )

Do you think I'll take back all I've said to you if I know what they were?

[unquiets]

( only a god because of the powers he has. )

There's... The Shi'ar. They're not from Earth. Doesn't make them gods.

( do they have powers? david doesn't actually know. )

I've made mistakes, the kind that deserve apologies and forgiveness, the kind that you have to spend time working on yourself after.
I'm not going to pretend there's not a chance.
People surprise you.
But they surprise themselves more often.