Bagels (Steve, Bruce)

[aa_valkyrie]

It is a bright morning, warm and clear and only mildly rather than disgustingly humid. Birds singing, pigeons cooing, children at play, etc., etc. Apparently, beautiful days make Bruce Banner broody, or at least, something does. He is sitting on a park bench with his feet planted wide and his shoulders slouched against its back, making his slow, steady way through his bagel and schmear. His forehead is marked by a thinky frown. He is wearing yesterday's pants, and a collared shirt of pale yellow that might've been more vivid a few dozen washings ago.

Oh how convenient, Steve is jogging. Or, really, running, because jogging probably doesn't do him much good. He's barely broken a sweat, which suggests he's maybe had a couple laps around the park so far. But the familiar sight of a certain scientist is enough to slow him. "Hey, Bruce," he greets him in an affable, morning-person kind of tone, approaching his bench.

This bright morning with its slow heat does little to deter Valkyrie as she strolls along the winding path of the park dressed in jeans and a dark leather jacket. In one hand she carries a bagel. A long dark scabbard hanging at her back, crossing her broad shoulders. "Is this seat taken?" She inquires brusquely, striding towards Bruce and gesturing towards the empty space to his side. That one. There.

Bruce looks up from the bagel in his hands, blinking as his dark eyes flick over the ... jogger. He lowers his food in a faint crinkle of paper and nods one, greeting, "Steve," in a fairly mild, neutral way. He blinks again, with a slow, tilt-angled baffle to his head as he looks toward the incoming woman. He looks down at the bench, and then back up at the woman again. At length, he says, "Nope," because it is pretty apparent that the space on the bench is unoccupied.

Steve looks over at the woman, his gaze tracking rather quickly to the scabbard on her back. "Ma'am, is that a sword?" he asks her, somewhere between mildly accusatory and a bit disappointed, like he is suddenly her father. He is everybody's father.

And up and up. The woman, blonde and sharp featured, is quite tall even beyond a Midgardian model's stance and twice as broad. "My thanks," Valkyrie replies simply, nodding towards Bruce. The hand that does not hold her bagel -- ever important, that -- slips behind her to shift the lay of her sword as she sits. Eyes cold as the northern seas rake over Steve's features as he poses that question, mouth twitching in a frown. One of curiosity. Valkyrie do not baffle. "Your eyes are sharp, soldier."

Bruce shifts a little uncomfortably, not taking another bite of his breakfast but looking sidelong toward the very tall woman with a kind of abstracted side-eye. A little tension visible in the line of his shoulders, he seems subtly straighter as he sits than his prior slouch. "Well, it's not like it's a /small/ sword," he points out, somewhat inanely. His dark eyes lift toward Captain Rogers, eyebrows pinched together. Help.

"I don't think you're supposed to carry those around," Steve says, because even if carry laws were different in the 1940s, surely the police would have had issues with swords even back then. He glances at Bruce, and agrees, "It's not."

Valkyrie does take another bite of her breakfast. Her gaze shifts from one man to another before slipping towards a group of teenagers playing on the grass, seemingly unbothered by their questions. "Many do not notice. Dragonfang is many things, small is not among them," she answers simply.

"I'm sure the nice lady isn't going to do anything bad," Bruce says to Steve in a kind of awkward, careful voice to match his worried eyebrows, "with her sword. That has a name. Involving teeth."

Don't worry, Bruce. Cap will protect you. "That doesn't sound very likely, ma'am," Steve says, the Knit of Disapproval appearing between his brows. "Not noticing, I mean. But -- you're still not supposed to carry it around."

"Do you seek to remove it from me?" Valkyrie questions sharply, inclining her chin towards Steve and looking unimpressed with the turn of his questioning. "Most mortal men should not have eyes to see it...but you are not such alone, are you?" She muses, brow furrowing as she looks from one man to the other.

"Oh, hell," Bruce mutters under his breath. He looks at her sidelong, and then sidles to his feet, turning in a pivot to get a better look at her and Steve as he tucks one hand into his pocket. The bagel remains, incongruous, in his other hand. "No, no, we're-- perfectly mortal. Normal. Normal guys." (This is not going to work, Bruce.)

Steve's gaze flickers briefly to Bruce as he stands, then less briefly to the civilians in the immediate vicinity as he takes stock. "Can I ask where you're from, ma'am?" he asks Valkyrie.

"You need fear no harm from me then, although that is hardly what you are," the Valkyrie says simply, the wry edge of what might become a smile at the curves of her mouth. Not mortal men alone. She has seen the television. "I have walked your lands for many years before you were born and likely shall many years after your falls." Her cold gaze shifts to Steve. "You might. Tell me, how fares the Son of Odin, child of war?"

"He's fine," Bruce says, as with companionable ease. His gaze narrows on the Valkyrie, a little quizzically as he attempts to place her in his memory vis a vis the somewhat badly angled images he viewed the day prior. "You, uh ... you've been here awhile, then?"

"Are you a -- friend of Thor's?" Steve asks, a bit more curiously and a bit less -- trying to place her. He was not there for that conversation, after all.

"That is well to hear. The rumors have been of great interest to me." All the other-worldly gossip. "No. You could say...that I am familiar with his father," Valkyrie admits, tone dry with humor. She takes another bite of her bagel. It is delicious and topped with sesame seeds. "A very long time."

Bruce's bagel is boring. Just plain. There is cream cheese on it. He seems a lot more interested in the company at this point. "A very long time," he repeats. "So you haven't seen him around? Oh, crap, is that my phone." Subtle, he pulls the phone out from his pocket and starts trying to fiddle with it one-handed. After a moment, he puts the bagel between his teeth and holds it there as he uses both hands to mess with the phone. By the knit of his brow, he seems deeply puzzled by it, like a man unaccustomed to phones, or maybe using totally unfamiliar features. Very subtle, Bruce.

"Are you an--" Steve hesitates over the word for a moment, like even now he still can't quite believe it. "--Asgardian? I hope you understand why we'd be concerned, given -- recent events." You go be subtle, Bruce.

Valkyrie's brows rise in an arch as slow as the dawning sun over her eyes, the cast of her gaze sharpening with the intonation of the word. Asgardian. "I am no Asgardian, not as your son of Odin is. What make you of yourselves, heroes? Sons of stars and..." She pauses as she looks to Bruce, perhaps unable to place him quite so well when he is not LARGE AND GREEN. "Normal men." What is subtle? She ignores the phone. "I understand, but I lay no hand to the blade to hinder this realm. On that you have the word of my blood. I am Valkyrie."

Clicky-click, says the phone. Bruce eyes it suspiciously, and then puts it back in his pocket. Biting off a mouthful of bagel, he takes the rest back into his hand and studies the woman with a lingering crinkle to his brow. "Well, that's ... good," he says, having swallowed. Turning back to his grounded wryness, he says, "You sure sound like Thor." Some of the worrying tension has eased out of him due to the seeming cooling of the potential conflict; no LARGE or GREEN here for now.

"What do we make of ourselves?" Steve mirrors back at her in a questioning manner, a little unsure. "I'm just serving my country, ma'am." He looks to Bruce, brows lifted, as he puts the phone away.

"Don't look at me, I have no idea what I make of myself," Bruce says, looking up. "Sorry, that wasn't rhetorical?"

"Do I? I feel I must apologize then, Odinson has had far less time to attend to his manners but I find I do not speak often," Valkyrie muses, smile pushing back onto her lips. Her attention slips away from the men, turning towards the field with youths at play once more -- watching it critically as the sun catches her features, eyes crinkled at the corners with the soft lines of age. "Perhaps." That is an answer to the both of them.

"Well-- uh, I didn't mean to imply..." Bruce starts, and pauses because her smile makes him suspicious that she has done this on purpose.

Steve frowns at the vagueness of her reply, his gaze studying her closely. "If you're not friends with Thor," he asks, not suspicious so much as covering bases, "what are you doing here?"

Steve's question draws her intent gaze away from the the children at play, but not before she offers Bruce as graceless smile and a shake of her head. "It is not matter. My speech is my own," she offers in the silence of his pause. "Odison is not my concern, as I told you. I am Valkyrie." That is her answer as if that name is not simply a name alone. How's your mythology, boys?

Bruce's isn't great, but he does manage a few associative connections. "As in, Ride of the?" he says. Not really his area of expertise, obviously. He bites off another chunk of bagel and eats it, watching the woman with a lingering crease to his brow as he chews. "I guess it's a free country, Captain," he asides to Steve, not without irony.

Steve's mythology looks to be even worse, as he can't even offer up as much as Bruce. "Of course," he does agree with the scientist's last sentiment, looking back to Valkyrie. With a certain wry humor, he says, "I suppose the police aren't going to give you a hard time if they can't see your weapon."

Polishing off her own bagel in several short bites, a slight silence follows Bruce's assessment. "The inspiration of such," she admits finally, rolling her eyes as she crumples the paper in her hand. "A high ranking warrior to be named a Captain," Valkyrie notes with a tip of her chin. A token of impressed. "I think that you would find...that no one gives me a hard time." At least, not more than once. There is some pride in that.

Bruce looks like he wants to say something about that, but he forestalls his own commentary with another, larger bite of bagel. He only has a small corner of bagel and cream cheese left; he holds onto this with a faint narrowing of his dark eyes. "That's Captain Rogers, I'm Dr. Banner," he says helpfully once he has swallowed. "Should, uhm, do you want us to tell Thor you said hello?" He glances back at Steve with eyebrows that say, do you ever get the feeling there's no longer a weird cap on our lives?

"Not that high," Steve demurs. "And I really only got it because -- well, I guess that's not very important." He looks to Bruce with a tense sort o smile. "I'm sure they don't, ma'am," he tells Valkyrie.

The bards never get it right, not even in as an opera. Valkyrie inclines her chin in a nod, sweeping her fingers along the pants. She really isn't dressed like a Valkyrie of legend, at least not at the moment. "I will count it it as an honor, Doctor Banner. Captain Rogers," she replies formally, offering Steve a slight smile. "Stories of war are meant to be spoken over mead." That is how that is done, yo. "If you wish -- I am certain that we will cross paths in time enough. Thank you for the space, Doctor Banner. May your battles bring you glory." That said, she rises from the bench and tosses the crumpled napkin from her bagel into the trash with a flick of her wrist. Hard throw.

"Are you really arguing that you don't deserve your stripes?" Bruce asks Steve with a sudden smile, eyebrows up as humor begins to crinkle the corners of his eyes again. He glances back at her, clearing his throat, and then says, "Sure. You ... too. Uhm," he starts, and then puts the rest of his bagel in his mouth instead of asking. Omnom.

"I was an enlisted man," Steve says with a faint smile. "But when I finally got to Europe, they couldn't have Captain America not being a Captain." He shakes his head, watching Valkyrie go with a faint baffle. "Have a -- good day, ma'am." What else do you say?


Val is not convinced that is a good thing.