#ash the butler

It was a nice night out. She preferred the cooler air, although it didn’t do much to help her stinging skin. And this was California, so it was only ‘cool’ compared to how hot it had been a few hours before. (Not that she’d been outside a few hours before, or very much at all in the last few days.) She would probably have been fine in just the threadbare clothes she’d been wearing during most of her latest infiltration, but the scarf and jacket she’d stolen (violently) on her way out was a welcome addition. It concealed most of her exposed injuries and some of the blood stained on her shirt, leaving anyone who saw her only able to wonder about what was up with the top half of her face.

A pretty normal sight, all things considered, to any experienced night guard at the building she was approaching now. The two at her preferred entrance melted out of the shadows as she approached, having definitely seen her coming from a distance.

“Excuse me, ma’am, what is your business at this…” one of them started, trailing off when she pulled the scarf down. She would like to think that it was just because they recognized her and not because the bruising had gotten that much worse since the last time she saw her reflection.

“Friendly afternoon visit,” she said with a winning smile, ignoring how stretching those facial muscles made her want to wince.

“…Can you tell us the date, ma’am?” the other one asked after a second of staring.

“November 3rd, 1923,” she said, still smiling, without skipping a beat.

“Past midnight it’s November 4th, ma’am.” The second one said evenly.

“Of course, the late hour must be getting to me.”

This passed quickly, like two actors going over their thoroughly memorized lines. After an exchanged glance and a pause that would have made anyone else start to doubt their delivery, the first guard nodded, pressed something on their communicator, and stepped back to get the door for her.

Not bothering to pull the scarf back up now, she walked confidently into the dimly lit back entrance area, making a beeline for where she knew the elevator was. There was a special code in here, too, to make it to the penthouse, but she had that one memorized as well.

Leaning back against the support bar for a minute was nice, though she had to position herself carefully so as not to let it dig into her back or side in a bad position. Closing her eyes on the ride up, she hummed slightly in appreciation of how smooth the elevators were here. No jittering to worry about, just a soft whirring and the slight feeling of vertigo as it came to a stop many storeys up in the air.

The more steps she took to get into one of the most well-defended areas of this place, putting a set of barriers between her and anyone who might have been in pursuit, the more tension bled out of her shoulders.

As soon as she stepped out of the elevator, she was met by the familiar face of the butler, who had evidently seen her coming and had already known that it was her, rather than the one other person who was allowed in that elevator with any regularity.

“Hey, Ash,” she said casually before they could get through a more formal greeting, raising one hand in a lazy wave and holding back a wince as it reminded her of a hit she’d taken to the shoulder earlier.

“Good evening.” They sounded as proper and English as ever, and she didn’t miss their perceptive eyes zeroing in on every unusual detail about her current appearance, not only the injuries but definitely also the ill-fitting clothes and hair in desperate need of a wash.

(She’d been lucky no one had decided an impromptu haircut was in the cards. She wouldn’t have been able to stop them without breaking cover, but that would have been a little more awkward to explain to her sisters than the usual aftermath of a prolonged fight.)

“…Victor won’t be in for another week, I’m afraid, but the room is open to you as always,” they said with the air of someone who was giving the usual pleasantries only as a precursor to a more serious subject change, and was not trying to hide it. “Are you alright?” And there was the serious part.

“Yeah,” she shrugged, rolled her shoulders, and this time could not stop a wince. She merged it smoothly into a more joking sort of smile-grimace. “It’s just from the job I’ve been on, there were a couple of “complications,” you know how it is. No death traps in the kitchen tonight?”

The attempt at changing the subject again was not successful, as Ashton followed her into the kitchen and shooed her away to wait on a barstool while they got her a glass of water with exactly one cube of ice. Or, a sphere of ice, because the fridge here was massive and fancy and had both a cube and a sphere option for how the ice could come out.

The water was wonderful to her parched throat, and she held the glass up longer than necessary to let the ice rest against the split in her lip for a few seconds. It was always nice to spend a few minutes after one in the morning sipping water with a tall British person in a suit and pencil skirt hovering over her every move.

“Need something?” she asked with a look over the lip of the glass.

“Are you sure you’re alright, Ms Roxanne? You don’t need… medical attention?” Right, yeah, they were a highly skilled government agent before they became a butler. Definitely had some good first aid training from all that.

“Just some bandaids and a full night’s sleep… And, again, you can call me Roxy.”

Ashton did not look convinced, and then they turned to where she knew the painkillers and general medications of varying strengths were stored. There was no stopping them from this now, but she could try anyway for the principle of the thing.

“I’ve done this before, Ashton, it’s not that bad.”

“To put it lightly, Ms Roxanne, you look as though you tried to fight a team of superheroes. Or, if I were inclined to be generous, won a fight against an entire street gang.” Maintaining stern eye contact, they set down a couple of pills and a cookie.

“Not as wrong as you could be.” Roxy picked up the cookie first, searching both sides with suspicion. It was the imported kind that was labeled ‘biscuit’ instead of ‘cookie’ and which everyone knew she secretly liked but pretended to be suspicious of anyway. Because they were in the US, so being suspicious of England was funny. “What’s this, weird, British thing– trying to poison me?”

“Would you like me to put the biscuit away and let you have an upset stomach? Please pardon me for assuming you haven’t eaten in the last hour.”

Not feeling up to a prolonged bit at the moment, Roxy caved and ate the ‘biscuit’. After swallowing the painkillers with the second half of her water, she let the ice sit for a moment again. It turned out talking too much made the split lip hurt worse, who could’ve guessed?

“I notice you snuck some melatonin in there,” she observed.

“To help you sleep. Pardon me again for assuming you may have some trouble, otherwise,” they paused and looked her up and down again, “considering.”

“Fair,” she admitted.

They sat in silence as she finished off the water one sip at a time. She debated waiting for the ice to melt enough that she could take another tiny sip every several minutes, just to see how Ashton would react, then decided against it and crunched what remained of the ice sphere.

Getting to bed wasn’t too much of a hassle. Ashton followed her to the master bathroom, because of course they did, but left her to go inside by herself. She only heard them step in once she was in the middle of showering, presumably to put some things on the counter and whisk away her dirty and one hundred percent stolen clothing.

Hot water would be nice and she happened to know for a fact that it was literally unlimited here, but she kept it to a mild, lukewarm temperature as she carefully cleaned everything she could currently reach without wincing, and let soap and water wash down her back unassisted to at least get the worst of it off back there. Drying off was a little bit of an ordeal, but the towels were very soft and she didn’t have any head wounds to stop her from wrapping up her hair. Everything she couldn’t get for the risk of aggravating some injury or another could just air dry while she went looking for first aid supplies to use on her face.

When she turned around to see how her back looked, she let out a low whistle. Who knew whips could do that when you weren’t being nice and responsible with them? (Probably every single person who’d ever been remotely involved with the “market” that her latest job had had her infiltrating.)

There were two options here. One, she could put on the silky robe Ashton had left hanging up for her and go to bed without dealing with all that yet, and probably wake up really sore and maybe with some kind of infection. Two, she could get some help tending to it and go to bed with some level of reassurance that it was fine, but at the cost of Ashton knowing exactly how bad it looked.

With a towel around her waist, she cracked the door and summoned them. Their face remained carefully neutral even after they saw, which definitely meant that they thought it was incredibly bad but knew that Roxy would not be taking constructive criticism on the choices she made that led up to it. That, or, they just didn’t want to get into it right now, in favor of getting her into a bed at some point during that melatonin’s window of greatest effect.

There was a lot more stinging disinfectant and a lot more bandaging going on back there than Roxy would have thought necessary, herself, but she wasn’t going to complain. Anything touching the whip marks directly was incredibly Bad with a capital B, but she had to admit to feeling a lot better once they were all cleaned and wrapped up.

The one joke she cracked about how it wasn’t as bad as it could be because she didn’t have any broken bones did not seem to go over well, so she conceded and didn’t say much until they were done. Ashton helped her into the robe and left her to get some pajama pants on by herself, continuing to hover and help until she was safely tucked in between Victor’s silk sheets.

It was still uncomfortable to lie down in most positions she tried, but, then again, that melatonin really was having a window of greatest effect.

- - -

Predictably, Roxy woke up sore. The painkillers had worn off at some point, so she got the full experience of throbbing and stinging and every attempted movement making her limbs want to go on strike. They had not yet managed to achieve independence from the rest of her, however, so when she decided it was time for them to get her standing up, they obeyed. The blackout curtains did their job well, so she had to pull one back slightly if she wanted to see by anything other than the soft, slightly futuristic floor lights on the edges of the room.

Taking stock, she determined that this was actually better than a couple of the times she’d come out of a mission injured. When her hair fell into her face for want of a headband, it was soft and light from being cleaned with incredibly expensive, high quality rich-people products, and she knew her back would have been a lot worse without Ashton’s help.

Speaking of Ashton, they seemed to have woken up before her, because she could smell something cooking. Possibly more than one something, which would make sense if they still felt like hovering but hadn’t come in to wake her up yet. There was the almost-imperceptible sound of voices, as if they were talking to themself or perhaps playing a video. Cooking tutorial, maybe.

The stolen clothing from the night before was nowhere to be seen; either it was waiting to be washed or Ashton had burned it. Roxy wasn’t worried about what happened to most of it, but it would be nice if the bloodstained parts had been saved in case she felt like getting them tested for genes.

Leaving the robe on the bed, she stretched her arms as much as they dared as she made her way to steal one of Victor’s shirts. They were long enough that she had gone around the penthouse in one with no pants before (but she would rather get stabbed again than get out of these soft pajama pants before eating something). There were no headbands to steal in Victor’s bedroom, and she didn’t feel like scavenging the bathroom for elastics, clips, or pins. So, with her hair loose, wearing no more than pajama pants, bandages, and an oversized button-up shirt, she pushed her hair back and stepped out.

Ashton was, indeed, doing their thing in the kitchen, wearing pants today along with an apron that looked a little too professional for someone making relatively normal breakfast in a non-restaurant kitchen. More curtains kept the floor-to-ceiling windows in the main area from letting in too much light, but from the angle and brightness she could still estimate that it must be later than she usually woke up. And from a glance at the clock, she could confirm that it was almost nine in the morning. She had reallyoverslept.

As she nosed her way into the cooking space, she found them carefully transferring what looked like small fried pies out of a skillet. Uncooked ones waited their turn on a plate nearby.

“You need a little more oil,” she observed, her voice coming out a little more thick and sleepy than she would have liked. Actually wait, hold on, she hadn’t seen anyone making these since the last time she visited family. “You can make spanakopita?” The question came out sounding like an accusation.

“I can make anything, given a good recipe, Ms Roxanne.” So that probably had been a cooking video she’d heard before. Ashton removed the last one from the pan and reached for more oil, but refrained from putting any new ones in until they had turned to shoo her away from the barstools. “I would invite you to wait in the living area,” was their way of banishing her, possibly to avoid having their cooking process nitpicked again. Possibly also to keep her from seeing them pull up a tutorial to nitpick their own cooking process with.

When she stifled a yawn with the back of her hand, she was reminded of her shoulders’ present desire to complain about everything but especially movement. Sitting down in a chair that had a soft back would be pretty nice…

The living area was surrounded by sliding walls that could be used to keep it more or less separate from the adjacent sometimes-areas sometimes-rooms. At the moment, it had a wide doorway on one side, a deployed wall opposite the full length windows, and a view into Victor’s office area and the back of his tall spinny chair. Were she feeling inclined to snoop, Roxy would have looked into there, but was distracted easily by the setup surrounding one of the lounge chairs. A side table held a full glass of water with exactly one sphere of ice, a small pitcher with more water and no ice, and a tall mug of steeping tea. The matching table on the other side held a very inviting plate of buttered toast, with a fried egg sitting on top of one piece. 

For a second, she thought about draping herself over a couch instead of taking the obviously intended seat, just to see how Ash reacted. But her desire for water and toast outweighed her desire for mischief at this time, so she sank down into the black leather and took a second to close her eyes and breathe in and will her strained muscles to relax. It wasn’t like the guys she’d been spying on could make it up here, even if they had somehow tracked her all the way to the building. And her next information rendezvous wasn’t until that evening, so she could take a minute to chill.

When her eyes opened, it was to the realization that her current seat was centered perfectly behind Victor’s chair, brought to her by the realization that said chair was slowly turning around.

Of the two supervillains that she was familiar with, she knew that one of them participated in dramatics mostly because it helped with the stress of the job, and partly because it was fun. Victor Stirling, on the other hand, having inherited quite a few things from his supervillain parents including a general style of mannerisms, was probably not doing the chair spin reveal thing ironically.

Before he came to a stop, facing her head-on, Roxy put together that Ashton must have called him about her condition either while she was in the shower or after she had fallen asleep last night. If he hadn’t meant to come back for another week, very few other things could have summoned him on such short notice.

She prepared a smirk and a tease about him being predictable, but both died before making it out when she met his eyes.

“So I’m not known for cutting business meetings short.” Starting off strong with a non sequitur, classic. Roxy’s smile started to edge back on as she watched Victor stand up from his seat.

“Catch you in the middle of one?” she asked, then remembered her voice wasn’t great at the moment and she would be partaking of some water before saying anything else.

“No, I was just starting the day in Spain, actually,” he answered while watching as if worried that she might have trouble drinking water, of all things. And without waiting for another response, he launched right back into… Ooh, he was monologuing.

“Allow me to paint a picture of it for you. It was past ten in the morning, I had completed much of my less savory business the night before, and had the entire afternoon ahead of me booked with meetings on the more savory side of things, when suddenly I find I’m receiving a call from my good, trusted friend Ashton, whom you may be aware I’ve expressly told to call me only in the circumstances of an emergency.

“And, upon answering this call, what should I hear them say, but that my girlfriend arrived at a late hour and is much worse for wear.

“Now, I know that my dear, competent, intelligent partner is experienced and knows how to handle herself in her work, so if Ashton is calling my emergency line, the situation she finds herself in must be truly dire, no? Certainly not the usual bouts of combat –which I am well aware you can normally teleport out of the moment they become too much– and certainly not gained from your usual heists and espionage, no, I was told that you seem to have been whipped?”

The worry in his voice was clear, and would have been clear even to someone who didn’t know him well enough to read him. As he drew closer, having apparently vented enough of his feelings for the moment to move to the next stage of his presentation, Roxy saw that his suit was rumpled and was probably, in fact, the same suit he had put on before 10 AM in Madrid. Had he slept at all? Maybe on the couch she had been eyeballing a second before this began. If anyone had gone into his bedroom while she was asleep, she probably wouldn’t have stayed asleep for very long.

“And I don’t mean to put down your skills, it would be foolish for anyone in my position to suggest that you aren’t a professional, or chose your mission poorly. But your present state is…” He broke eye contact to look down at the gauze covering her torso through the gap in the stolen shirt. He probably knew that it was there for everything on her back, but he wouldn’t be wrong to wonder if it was also hiding any bruises over her ribs or stomach area. She knew there was a pretty bad one peeking out by her collarbone.

“Roxanne. Roxy. I know that in our… business relationship, I tend to be the one who calls on you for assistance in these underground affairs, but you must know that you can call on me when something is… of a caliber where you may want my assistance.” He stopped a couple of steps in front of her, giving another up and down look. “You mentioned you were going into something undercover.”

“Deep undercover,” she confirmed. When he kept looking expectant, she continued, leaning forward to get to business, “It wasn’t in the cards to go in on the same level as the higher-ups, and we needed to confirm how exactly they get the victims and transport them. So I posed as one.”

Victor was quiet for a moment, his crossed arms rising, then falling as he took a breath and let it out.

“You remained just long enough to get the necessary information,” he assumed, and she nodded. Letting out another breath, he closed the distance and half-knelt in front of her in one smooth motion, reaching up to put a hand gently under her chin, moving it to cup the side of her face. “Then I hope you’ll be able to tell me,” his voice was softer now, not that that in any way concealed the dangerous undertone as his eyes lingered on her split lip, black eye, the faint bruise left from a harsh slap, “who did this to you?”