[ open ] up bright and early for their daily races

[glumshoe]

Who: Will Graham (notyourteacup) and YOU!
Where: the field near to the forest's edge
When: usually early afternoon from 8/24 to the next few days
Rating: PG for guns
Summary: Nothing makes Will feel like he's out of control more than something else pulling his body's strings. The angels & demons may be gone, but Will's sense of violation isn't.
The Story:

It might not even have been a worthwhile venture. With talk of werewolves and angels and superheroes, there was a real press on the psyche to make yourself useful, armor up, don't be baseline. It wasn't something he or others could have changed, of course, barring mechanical minds like Stark's and maybe the hearts to match coming not too far behind. Will felt too exposed to open air again. All the vengeance and doublespeak he'd cloaked himself in Wonderland couldn't keep strings from looping around his limbs and throat, a doll driven around for chaos and amusement.

How could progress be undone so quickly on a whim? Will tried to answer that with the easy pull of a trigger, kick back against his bad shoulder, and the unsatisfying, soft sink of bullets into hay bales leaned against a dilapidated split-rail fence.

Over the course of the next several days, the targets on the bales were torn to shreds and replaced regularly, almost mechanically since Will didn't have anyone to surface anything else for outside of his usual insomniac exhaustion. To the observer, his stance suggested formal training, and for the intrepid adventurer looking to learn self-defense, a former cop wasn't a bad choice. He wasn't the best shot, but he knew where to put it and how. Neither was he closed to suggestion.

There were all sorts of reasons not to bother him, but perhaps there were more to do otherwise.

Comments

[widows_kiss]

It's the sound of gunshots that draws her from her run to investigate, although she's figuring someone is making use of the range. Often she finds Clint here, but today it's someone else. Will Graham - she'd spoken to him briefly at the Resistance meeting, although it's their time as teenagers together that sticks more freshly in her memories.

She watches him in silence for several rounds, taking in his stance and the ease he's practicing with. Formal training, probably. Not military. Police, perhaps? It's likely, although he doesn't strike her as the cop type. Wouldn't have been what she'd pinpointed him as, but that's not really important here, is it?

After a while, she steps forward, letting her approach be heard so she doesn't startle him - never a wise thing to do with a man with a gun. Her hands are tucked in her pockets and she's casual and relaxed as she strolls towards him.

"You're favoring your one shoulder. Old injury?"

[glumshoe]

It would comfort her to no end that Dean Winchester came to the same conclusion regarding the likelihood that Will was actually police. So there's that. Great company to be in.

But because he likes Natasha and has since their first meeting (and feels somewhat obligated after his teenage self had ratted her out to a younger and still psychotic Hannibal some weeks ago), he can quell the pins and needles that creep up when he's under watch with a little effort. His disquiet is the target of the exercise more than the actual targets he'd set up, and while it won't be suppressed entirely the same drowning it out in gunshots will work for a little while.

Natasha takes the same in to Will's psyche as Beverly, he notices, a weary pleasure and pang in it.

"Yeah, it's a rotator cuff issue," he says, lamentation only in the slight dip somewhere in the middle of the sentence, like he couldn't reply to her the exact same way. "Isosceles is out of the question - got stabbed back in the force."

[widows_kiss]

"Ouch," she replies in sympathy, sauntering over to come to a stop beside him, eyeing his target and the shots he'd taken. "You have a good eye. You were a cop?"

It's a careful question, seemingly light on the surface, but sometimes navigating conversations in Wonderland is like walking through a minefield.

[glumshoe]

"Yeah, such a good shot that I had one of the lab crew correcting me," he says with no lack of self-deprecation, there to fill the pit that widens in his stomach over Beverly and the state of things when he disappeared. "She did pick off a mother holding a kid hostage from about fifty feet, so I could forgive a little crossing of the streams, in terms of necessary job skills."

And Will teased about Natasha's "bodyguard" job, but (hilariously, like jazz) it's the boats that she doesn't rock that pulls the lens of Will's analysis just a fraction further into focus. He smiles thinly.

"Not a very good one, unfortunately."

[widows_kiss]

"She sounds impressive. Friend of yours?"

She shoots him a sideways glance at his self-depreciating humor, a wry little smile playing about the corner of her lips. "You don't exactly strike me as the bad sort, either."

[glumshoe]

"Was." Will gives a minute shrug, the action more like he's rolling his shoulder. "Don't really know what we are now."

He thinks that maybe if he were a better sort as she says or could fix misguided perceptions, he wouldn't find himself cast in the role of the moodkiller this often.

"You speak with some expertise; does that mean you're going to tell me your real job, or should I keep coming up with new ones?"

[widows_kiss]

That statement gets a crooked grin from her as she leans against a nearby tree, her arms crossed over her chest. "See, I would, but now you've just made me curious about what you're coming up with as a suitable explanation."