Sometimes people come to him afterwards to talk one on one, and most of the time it's emotionally draining, but he stays because they need him to stay. There's a lot of crying - when Daisy approaches he sincerely hopes there's not going to be crying.
What she says is definitely not what he expects to hear. "Spent a few months after just... feeling bad. And that wasn't doing me a whole lot of good. Or anyone, so, I started going to these meetings. And it helped, and then they wanted me to lead them. I guess I just know it's going to be part of the process." Feeling guilty, and bad, and like a failure. But staying home would just echo his sentiments around to the other Avengers, and morale was already pretty scarce these days.
He hopes that she comes back to the next one. He thinks she hasn't been scared away and she sees people in varying stages of processing their grief, and maybe she can see herself making that progress.
"Thanks for staying," he says, because he personally knows how hard it is to have walked through those doors and sat down and actually want to talk. Or listen. Or anything but leave.
As soon as he speaks, she realizes that she's done this wrong. Of course, she has. He doesn't know her and has absolutely no context for why she'd ask a question like that. How fucking unfair is it for her to phrase something like that and not even think about how he might perceive it? Hasn't the man been through enough already without her adding to his emotional baggage?
"Thanks for... doing all this," she replies, so very tempted to use that as an out to escape like everyone else. She even gets so far as turning and taking a step toward the door before she stops herself. No, there's no running from this. So she turns back and, with a highly conflicted and fairly distressed expression, she digs a bifold out of her pocket.
"My name's Daisy," she says, holding the bifold open to display the SHIELD badge on one side and her agency ID card on the other. "I'm an agent of SHIELD. Not the secretly-infiltrated-by-Hydra version," she clarifies quickly. "We rebuilt from the ground up, went public a few years ago. You were on the run at the time, so..."
So maybe he'd missed the news? Things had gone horribly wrong almost right from the start and SHIELD had been on the government's shit list for a while after that, but they've mostly kept their activities to the shadows since. It's easier that way; staying out of the spotlight lets them get the work done without too much commentary from the political peanut gallery.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
What she says is definitely not what he expects to hear. "Spent a few months after just... feeling bad. And that wasn't doing me a whole lot of good. Or anyone, so, I started going to these meetings. And it helped, and then they wanted me to lead them. I guess I just know it's going to be part of the process." Feeling guilty, and bad, and like a failure. But staying home would just echo his sentiments around to the other Avengers, and morale was already pretty scarce these days.
He hopes that she comes back to the next one. He thinks she hasn't been scared away and she sees people in varying stages of processing their grief, and maybe she can see herself making that progress.
"Thanks for staying," he says, because he personally knows how hard it is to have walked through those doors and sat down and actually want to talk. Or listen. Or anything but leave.
no subject
"Thanks for... doing all this," she replies, so very tempted to use that as an out to escape like everyone else. She even gets so far as turning and taking a step toward the door before she stops herself. No, there's no running from this. So she turns back and, with a highly conflicted and fairly distressed expression, she digs a bifold out of her pocket.
"My name's Daisy," she says, holding the bifold open to display the SHIELD badge on one side and her agency ID card on the other. "I'm an agent of SHIELD. Not the secretly-infiltrated-by-Hydra version," she clarifies quickly. "We rebuilt from the ground up, went public a few years ago. You were on the run at the time, so..."
So maybe he'd missed the news? Things had gone horribly wrong almost right from the start and SHIELD had been on the government's shit list for a while after that, but they've mostly kept their activities to the shadows since. It's easier that way; staying out of the spotlight lets them get the work done without too much commentary from the political peanut gallery.