The morning after the night before

[mutant_gi_jesus]

Cable hadn't won, or tried to win, any prizes in the carnival so, as a consequence, he hadn't spent most of Halloween trying to fend off bloodthirsty stuffed animals that had been foolishly let into his home

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[badblood_rising]

After the day he had yesterday, all Sam wants to do is crawl into bed with Natalya and stay there. He wants one eye on Cori and the twins and Calliope, too, and an idea where Dean and Neil and Shari are, as well as two more guns with full sets of ammo and a machete. Hey, might as well throw in a pony with that list of wishes. But he knows he can't have all that at once and right now, he settles for walking with a ginger step to the Compound, planning on healing his cuts and bruises with a judicious use of nanobots. He doesn't want any physical reminders of Halloween to linger.

He doesn't know Cable, but he knows of him because of Natalya. Even without that slight preparation, after the day Sam had yesterday, the man's appeareance isn't about to give him pause. The mass of toys are.

Sam halts, giving the entire area a wary once over. "..They're all dead. Right?"

[mutant_gi_jesus]

"Inanimate, at least," Cable replied, as he prodded a little girl doll that he'd tied to a boulder, with his shotgun and felt nothing but the give of metal pushing against wool.

"Zdravstvuj, Sam," he added, slipping into Russian to say hello. He hadn't so much as spoken to the other man, before, so the fact he used the informal greeting rather than the formal one probably wasn't earned, but Natalya was a good friend so it wasn't like he was unaware of his existence.

It also wasn't like he was unaware of how unhappy she used to be, and how she didn't seem to be any more.

[badblood_rising]

Sam, who has only ever spoken Russian to and with Natalya, blinks at the word and struggles for a moment to come up with a response. All his muscles are aching to some degree and his brain's included in that count.

"Privet," he manages, and turns his eyes the toys again. "You set traps? But they don't look-- Some are still in one piece." He remembers Coraline suggesting traps yesterday, and he's a little impressed that Cable managed so well for himself with that tactic. But Sam sees a lot of whole bodies midst the ties and stuffing. It doesn't look like Cable got around to killing them all.

[mutant_gi_jesus]

"Yes," Cable confirmed, calmly, as he put away his gun and untied the, now empirically harmless, little doll. "Some are."

"The ones properly restrained I left intact. I was curious to see what would happen this morning."

It took more time than simply blowing them up would, and it was possible that he could have taken down more toys, done more good, if he'd given up on capturing them. But he had been a guerrilla fighter before he'd had been anything else and his first instinct when someone pointed a weapon at him was to see if he couldn't steal it off them and fire it back. It wasn't something he would apologize for.

He wasn't a monster, though. The one time he'd found a toy too near a hut, when someone else's life had been at stake, then he'd forgotten about being clever and just used the shotgun.

[badblood_rising]

"I wouldn't have taken the chance," Sam replies, but there's little in the way of judgment in his tone. Closer to none than any, really. Obviously it worked out for the best, the toys safely taken care of, and if the attack had continued longer or the toys had shown new powers, it would have been a good thing to have a couple to poke at. But Sam doesn't regret his plan of attack any more than Cable does his.

He watches the big man untie the little doll and a wry smile tugs onto his face. "Now what are you gonna do with them?"

[mutant_gi_jesus]

Cable shrugged slowly as he turned back to face Sam, holding the doll in his metal left hand.

"I suppose, technically, they're stolen property," he replied, with the barest hint of a smile in return. "Though I doubt somehow that their owners are going to want them back."

[badblood_rising]

The smile grows a little broader. "Personally, I don't want to see anything inanimate and fuzzy or with a face near me for months. And they came into your possession... mostly of their own volition," Sam points out. "I think that's a legal loophole in your favor."

[mutant_gi_jesus]

"Which means I'm liable for their value but not their return, if I remember my days in law school correctly," Cable replied, casually.

"It's good to meet you in any case, Sam," he changed subjects without changing his tone or hesitating. "Natalya's a good friend."

[badblood_rising]

Value that's impossible to define, given the lack of economy, but Sam knows not to belabor a point so unimportant as this, if Cable's changing the subject. He's rusty at that kind of arguing anyway, his dreams of law school a distant memory.

"Yeah, good to meet you, too," he says. "Any friend of Natalya's..." Sam won't actually say that they're a friend of his. He's too cautious for that, these days. But it does mean something to him that she keeps him in her circle.

[mutant_gi_jesus]

"Is a friend of Natalya's" Cable finished, in Russian, with a smile. Natalya at least was recognizable and the rest were relatively common words, too.

And he held out the non metal hand, non doll carrying hand, out to shake.

[badblood_rising]

Sam's Russian is far from the best, but he parses that in about two seconds and coughs out a soft laugh in reply. It shouldn't be comforting to encounter reasoning like his in someone else, but it kind of is. People around here are too friendly, Sam sometimes thinks.

Sam takes Cable's offered hand for a firm shake. "You, um, want help cleaning up?"