Chapter 6
She slips into the team's hierarchy seamlessly. That is of course her job, but it is still interesting.
She also arranges what Tony loudly mocks as "group therapy" on a regular basis. They don't consist of just sitting in a circle having existential conversations. Instead, she utilizes the current routine of the team.
Training days are now training mornings with some "bonding" (Tony’s word again) during a sizable cool-down lunch break before they all warn back up for their evening sets. After lunch, she usually makes herself scarce. She's unlikely to be in the field with the team on a regular basis, so it's important for their dynamics to complement each other in a battle without a Soot present.
Movie nights now sometimes have maybe an hour after the movie is over where the team is held hostage. Usually, they spend the time talking about the film. The conversation can get deep, depending on the film. But it also sometimes means they end up explaining special effects to Steve.
Game nights are now… Well, they're the same as they ever were. Sporadic and chaotic. The soot rarely invades more than making snacks and cookies while everyone is playing and then eating half of it before anyone follows their nose over to the kitchen.
The soot touches base with each person privately, but she mainly sticks to group activities. Tony is the height of abrasive, but everyone else politely acknowledges her and answers questions in that vague ‘yes, I slept alright’ ‘no, I'm not worried about anything in particular at the moment’ fashion.
Sometimes truth or dare is played, because the team is apparently made up of adolescents. It's during one of these games, during some kind of upside down stunt, that the team sees the huge scar on the soot's neck. It looks like someone gouged her scent glands out. The scar is jagged and ugly, obviously not surgical. It's Steve who makes an audible sound at the sight. He's quick to cough, but it's obvious what he was responding to.
And because Tony is a stressed out prick, a week later when the game starts again, he asks, “Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
“What happened to your neck?”
Bruce hisses, “Tony.” And the room is still for a moment, everyone on edge.
But she just shrugs, hardly breaking eye contact, “I did.” And that's the end of it. Nothing in the rules say you have to explain your answer.
A few days later, the first call to action with a Soot is strangely anticlimactic. She's there when they leave. She's there when they get back. She doesn't hover, other than the first round of supplying ice packs, water bottles, and snacks. The next mission passes in the same way.
On the third, there'd been an argument between Steve and Tony that morning, so she put her foot down and required all of them to ride in the jet so that they could talk it out on the way there. She joined them, under the guise of acting as a moderator, but really she was just a camomile candle for the 26 minutes it took to land. Good thing she was useful in silence, because that was the quietist jet ride any of them had ever taken.