Owner	Pose
Wanda Maximoff	Lights glint on the waterfront and that ridiculous excuse of a theme park won't probably open for another month yet. The balmy promise of summer resides in the air peppered heavily by grilled meat and abundant noodles. A weekend stroll lets Wanda and Bucky fade into a crowd of older people, tracksuit mafiya, and a lot of young people out for a good time. Brighton has its pockets of club activity along the rattling railways, elevated over the heaving buildings that shudder every time one of the strings of cars squeals by. People are out on motorcycles or vehicles to contribute to the poisoning of the earth. Average, everyday stuff. Home away from home. "I get tired of the mansion," she says in Russian. Here, nearly everyone speaks some form of Slavic language or a cousin from the fallen USSR. It's nearly as common as English. "Our rooms are large and comfortable, with anything we could want at hand. But Janet -- what she said about money and cost, dues we owe, these things make me uncomfortable. I never wanted to be beholden to someone for my supper or my roof. Pietro and I owed debts enough and learned how bad it was whenever someone came to call." 'My father' is the unspoken implication, tall and helmed and unbowed. "How would you feel to relocate for a bit? Maybe find out how we do when no group activities are assigned on Thursday nights?"
James Barnes	Bucky takes a seat in one of the many benches along Brighton Beach. It's getting balmier and warmer so there's no coat, now, but there it a long sleeve Henley and the gloves metal hand, just in case people take notice of the tall man with the big cybernetic arm. He considers Wanda's words and then shrugs, smiling at her. "I don't mind relocating a bit. We can go to one of the other places we've got. Here, even. I could use a home renovation project for spare time," he says, smirking.
Wanda Maximoff	Henleys will do, though anyone who might look too closely at Bucky's arm might trip off the keen perception of the man or the woman's reaction. She's not the sort to default to extreme measures, but sometimes a thread of distraction sends the too curious on their way. Another thing to talk about. Another thing to address. The familiar byway of the night market brings memories of Europe. She smiles, but shakes her head, not turning down that way when they have other destinations to handle. The ocean's a line of darkness to their right. On the left, the stacked weight of Brooklyn. Wanda doesn't notice she fusses with the hem of her tunic shirt, scrunching it up and loosening it like a cat kneads at a blanket. Milk stomping for them, mild anxiety for sure. "You're certain? I do not want to take you away from your friends or the support. It won't be the same, da? Noise, buying our groceries, repairing the walls or repainting. A landlord, maybe." The thought makes her laugh. "Not everyone is Stark or Thor. Money always on our minds when we have no safety net. What sort of place, here? Apartment squeezed at a bad part of Queens? You tell me the dream."
James Barnes	"Well, this place is under my name, so no _landlord_, to speak of. But we'll have to do something for money, I suppose. Though I have a lot of savings," he admits. "And being in the Avengers means all those things Janet talked about are still working their way through the system. It's not like I don't _have_ money." He lifts an arm and drapes it over her shoulders. "Plus all that stuff I squirreled away subconsciously over the past seventy years." What.
Wanda Maximoff	Wanda laughs. "It is the bank then. Someone owns it somewhere. You hide it at the records offices so no one tracks where the most dangerous boyfriend in New York lives?" She pauses, stepping out of the way so another person can move past them, arms encumbered by laundry, groceries, and a bag of cans to recycle. The clanking noises are almost as loud as the train thundering ponderously down the tracks. His arm around her, Bucky won't need much adjustment when she gets closer, matching her pace to his. "I feel bad. Not knowing how they do all their investments and fussing, does that make me a parasite on them? When it comes down to it, we don't need much." Her smile is lopsided, not quite getting to her eyes. A thought that shadows them, when she says, "Stock trades or roulette numbers go my way. Always going my way."
James Barnes	"I don't know." Bucky finds a bench for them to sit on and pulls Wanda over, dropping down and sitting her next to him. He leans back and keeps his arm around her. "I just know that back in my day, some people had a lot of money, and now a days, the amount of money those people seems really small compared to what some people have now, _even with_ inflation and all that shit. Rich get richer. That never really changes. I'm happy just having a place with you."
Wanda Maximoff	"Income for men in the Depression was about twenty percent of the cost of a home. Now, it is about fourteen percent. So the income you get from work, relative to the cost of a home, has gone down. From the worst economic time in history, recent history that is." Wanda brushes her wavy hair to the side, pulled onto the bench and landing lightly. "My classes gave me some strange numbers. They didn't seem real. But no one could afford an apartment here, could they? We might save for years and still the market would be so high." Her smile isn't sharp so might s tight, head shaken. "Sometimes I wonder if it's just. If a total reset of the system would make things any better, but it never seems to. You mean it was just as bad by the war? I understand why Erik sometimes feels how he does."
James Barnes	"I understand a lot of things about your father that I don't think a young James Barnes would have before the war, before Hydra, before any of this." Bucky takes a deep sigh and then leans back against the back of the bench with a saggy posture. Not like him at all. Even relaxed he's usually well poised. This is more his 'roadtrip' sitting position, but they're stationary. "In any case, this place is ours and we can do whatever we want with it. And if some day we can't, we'll get another. It's not hard. Kids are making millions playing video games online. I have superhuman reflexes. if all else fails I can play a first person shooter for millions to watch." He grins at her.
Wanda Maximoff	"I don't agree with him. Not much." Shaking her head, Wanda stares up at the sky. The clouds roaming over the sulfur-stained dome is pretty, though it mostly lets her rest her head on Bucky's shoulder. "He sees things in black and white. The views he holds give no room for variation. What does he think of us? I can only imagine Lorna's face, if she were not so busy with Genosha and all that the Brotherhood does. I'm glad to have walked a different path and seen different things." Her hand rests on Bucky's knee, and she tries to match the slouchy posture. Of teenagers earning millions, there is only a stifled chuckle. "You would be an unfair match for Newbmaster420, even hopped up on Mountain Dew. Whatever they put in that is not good. You want to, I'll hide the arm so they cannot say unfair advantages."
James Barnes	"It's hard not to see it his way at least in some issues. Sometimes you have to see things in black and white in order to create a situation in which you can see the nuances again. When we fought the Nazis back in the war, we were good, they were bad. Period. Especially when Steve was around. It's only in looking back, seeing what happened after, taking a look at the ramifications and the parallel reasons the country joined the war, what they got from it. But if we hadn't taken that black and white stance back then we might not be here to ponder those nuances. So. Sometimes I see it." Bucky takes a deep breath. "Newbmaster420 can suck it."
Wanda Maximoff	Wanda tilts her head to the side, better to see Bucky and his reactions. Sound only conveys so much. Other information--that she needs. "How do you mean? I don't know how not to see the nuances, sometimes. No one is all bad or all good. But sitting there in New York, hearing about the attacks all over Europe, how could you not want to help? It is not much different now. Wars happen. We know civilians hurt. We have the ability to make that better, and change how it goes. That doesn't require absolute thinking." She stifles a sound, strangled laugh or gurgled sigh, hard to say which. "Newbmaster420," sounds so dumb in Russian, it's a crappy handle, "can be jealous. He gets to curl up in the light of his computer. You get a lumpy mattress, only three pillows, and one too many canned soups in the cabinet. We shall call it freedom, and laugh." Her hand draws an arch in the sky, as though to reveal that brave new future, "Toy Story" style. "We have to go grocery shopping then. And maybe sneak in a few more things to be comfortable."
James Barnes	"The people in charge didn't want to help. It wasn't until Pearl Harbor that they really decided to get into it," Bucky points out, "when they had the excuse of having been attacked ourselves." Bucky shrugs. "You make the other guy evil so you can justify all the things you're gonna do to them, Wanda. That's just how it is." "What kind of things do you want to sneak in?"
Wanda Maximoff	"Always politics. They want to gain, they want nothing of the sort. Stay behind the high walls where it is safe and let others sort it out," Wanda says in that way of hearing it many times. Different with a man who lived it, someone who stood in the Big Apple. The convoys sinking, the newspapers blaring. Different lives, different views. "An ocean between you and us. I know. My father's way is too rigid. I'll believe that even with machines hunting me and my people. That's the scary part. We learned nothing from that war that we did not turn on one another seventy years later." She gives that soft, ghostly smile. "Up to us not to repeat the same mistakes. So far, so good."
James Barnes	"People, like _a person_, are multi-faceted and will react to things differently not just depending on what happens to them, but also just, from what angle you look at them. It's all bullshit." He sinks his fingers into her auburn hair, letting out a soft sigh. "We'll figure our own shit out first, then the rest."
Wanda Maximoff	"Good enough for me. If they wanted our opinions, we'd have the microphones in our faces and not Tony and Steve's." This, a simple truth, is all that needs to be said. Wanda hops up from the bench, and then holds out her hands to Bucky. Not that he can really use her as ballast to get up without her toppling onto him. "Let's go home and see if it's comfortable enough for the night, and after that? The rest."