aa_valkyrie | Backdated to Imprisonment (Schmidt)

In holding, Schmidt's accomodations are sparse. They are that way for a reason. He has not been provided with a television, or reading material or a deck of cards. He has four walls and a bed. One of his walls is made of glass. He can see his guards and they can see him.

For the most part he has been quiet, keeping to his own thoughts -- occasionaly aggressive, when he has gone too long without sleeping. Some 37 hours into such a spell, he has undertaken the task of making his own entertainment to stay sane. Or at least as sane as he's ever been.

Left shoulder to glass at a lean close to the nearest guard's ear, he is telling a joke in German. The guard does not pretend to understand. He does not care that the joke ends with Schmidt shooting the last survivor of one of his munitions factories himself. So it goes.

It is unlikely that the guards will care much for what Schmidt has to say, whether in German or otherwise. The sound of Valkyrie's boots is barely more than a whisper as she strides down the hall, whether it is the natural inclination of the eye to slip away from her -- not noting her presence -- or the flash of an AVENGERS permission slip, she has found her way down to the cells. That identification is used again as she enters, a curious quick to her lips as her gaze rakes down the glass of the cell.

"You look a predator in that cage," Valkyrie judges. "About to bite his ear." It is a mark of SHIELD training that the guard does not step away from his position.

Schmidt is forced to finish marinating in his own wit prematurely at the interruption, leaving room for his teeth to show white through a chuff of air that might otherwise have been a chuckle. His eyes are set too black in his skull and his hair is too neat, shorn sheer at the sides and around the back. Military.

Also an illusion.

"Guten Abend," he greets, holding to his lean despite common courtesy dictating that he should right himself and regard her full on. "You appear to be an immense woman."

Eyes clear and crisp a blue as a winter iceberg rake his lean figure; her mouth tugs in a wry line to touch the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. "You appear to be nothing more than a man. Here I was expecting a monster, equal to haunt the memories of a great war."

Valkyrie is dressed in black: jeans, boots, shirt, and leather jacket. A lengthy sword hanging comfortably at her back. Every movement screaming that she knows how to use it for those her know to look. He is not the only predator in the room. "Good evening."

"That is precisely what makes wars so offensive, is it not? Great atrocities orchestrated by men. Carried out by men. And women, of course." Schmidt is an equal opportunity misanthrope, a gloved hand tilted in lazy apology for the initial omission.

The sword is taken in at a glance; he shifts his glare on down the rest of her and then to both guards before he finally removes himself from the glass. "You are not an American," he observes, fogged breath lifting clean away after him.

"How sounded your orchestra, Herr?" Valkyrie accepts his correction with a somber nod, hands kept loosely at her sides. Women as well. "It is not wars that are offensive. They can be a test as anything." A test of what...? That's the question.

Her pale brow lifts at the line of his glare, eyes tracing that fogged breath. "No. Neither are you. How strange that we both end up here?" She gestures towards the heavy glass that separates them and the content of the cell. It is such a nice place.

"Prachtvolle," says Schmidt, "had but I been allowed to play." There's a mercurial uptick to the tension cabled through his shoulders -- he is ill-rested and short-tempered to be replaying that last fateful scenario. A slow-drawn breath isn't quite enough to keep his jaw out of a lock. He has to take a moment.

When he speaks again, it is to change the subject. But.

He doesn't stray far.

"Is it?" Strange, he means. "You are here of your own volition. A great hero, I imagine. The world would be a more straight-forward place if evil always had a face to match."

The word does not translate, but perhaps its resonance hints at what it could be. A hint of sharpness in her gaze as if trying to imprint the foreign word to memory. Regardless, Valkyrie watches that slow creep.

She stands. Silent to his moment, little more than its bystander and guardian.

"I have found in as many years evil that has no need of a single face. It borrows as it needs, leeching into the skin and breath. It is action and thought, not features." Immutable. Then, she laughs. "No hero, I. But yes, of my volition." A heartbeat's pause breaks her words. "Do you think the world straightforward?"

The lack of emotive reaction makes him curious. Suspicious, also. Schmidt rounds back on the glass, approach paced to muffle his interest. He is as tall as she is, broad through the shoulders in a uniform no doubt designed to emphasize his physique.

He is vain, for a man with a skull for a face.

"Not yet," he says. At length.

They are almost a match at that height, their gaze meeting in an equal lock: pale blue to darkened hazel. The mirror of reflections could not be less of a match. Although far more broad and muscular than most women, Valkyrie's clothing serves to cover and cloak with no hint of artifice. Even her blade is an artifact of station and use.

His uniform is very sharp, were she the sort of appreciate such things.

"A dull world," she answers. A simple one.

Schmidt leers.

He is still leering when an unholy blue light begins to eat back from the peak of his nose and the arch of his brow, chewing flesh away from red hide and hatchet-edged bone. The transformation is far from complete when it recedes into a reverse. Supposed humanity quickly overtakes tendon and skull when he steps back and away, temper jerking leer to sneer in an animal bite of his teeth and a narrow at his eyes.

His available space is cramped. There is not much of anywhere for him to go.

How flattering. Valkyrie regards his leering visage with flat disinterest, bearing not a hint of fear nor impression in the hard Nordic slants of her face. He is but a man.

The vivid twists of iniquitous light, peeling away his flesh in hungry torrents, that draws her interest to the surface, prompting a step closer to the glass. Interest, but not horror. Horrific as it is. Squinting in an attempt to see through the blinding carving of light, Valkyrie watches the process on bated breath.

"There it is, then." His evil.

As there is nowhere for Schmidt to go, there is nothing for him to flip over or throw or kick. He shudders with the force of his own rage, breath seething hot through his teeth for the time it takes him to get it under some measure of control. Why do they keep sending people down to speak with him.

AMERICANS ARE AGAINST TORTURE, ARE THEY NOT?

Luckily, she is Valkyrie. They are probably pro-torture, but prefer DEATH as the answer.

"Was it something I said?" She muses, watching that white hot flare of rage with a coldly observant eye.

Self-control is locked down with a hydraulic hiss of held breath filtered out through Schmidt's sinuses. His facade evidently does not carry over into sound. What he mutters next is German and unintelligable anyway. It involves cows.

There is an edge of amusement to the subtle twist of her lips, feet drawing her backward a pace. "Rest well, incarnate," Valkyrie bids with a dip of her chin that carries some iota of respect as well as chastisement. She watches him a moment longer, then turns to leave. Maybe she'll get him a book. Involving cows. Probably not though.