Natasha usually prefers much subtler methods, so the state of the apartment she’s holed up in is a pretty clear testament to her current predicament. It’s a bad neighborhood and the building itself is even worse. The window she broke to get in doesn’t stand out, and the shattered glass is sprinkled across the living room carpet in the dark apartment.
She’s not particularly happy that she had to ask for help, but Peter has always been a decent guy and she can think of worse people to bring in. She’s leaning against the far wall in the dark, and she watches as he climbs in through the broken window. Once he seems to have avoided the minefield of broken glass, she steps away from the wall.
“What’s a fella like you doing in a place like this?” Her voice is full of dry humor. It’s a stark counterpoint to her limping gait, disjointed shoulder, and the blood smeared on her uniform. There’s a beat before she tacks on, “most of it’s not mine.”
Peter is in a hurry. He's never been asked for help by Natasha fucking Romanoff before, and he is determined not to mess up. She is a top tier hero, and one of the people he has thought of as an inspiration, and so his swinging through the city has an element of urgency as he collects a medical kit he kept secreted in one stash, and hurries for the place she had pinned.
When he arrives, eyes moving everywhere, spider-sense loud in his ears, he carefully enters the place she is at, his senses reading someone dimly at 3 o'clock. As he leaps from the wall to land past the broken glass, he sees her step out of the dark, wondering how she does that!
Peter smiles as he sees her, eyes curious as he eyes her limp. Seeing her at all not her usual kick-ass self make him feel rather uncertain and he nods. "Well, someone broke my favorite spider, and I thought I would come to do something about that."
He is rather glad the blood is mostly not hers, and nods. "I assume the other guy, or gal, is worse off?"
Peter motioned toward a spot for her to sit down so he could work. "How bad is it?'
Natasha is almost 100% certain that Loki being her drinking buddy is baffling to at least half the people she knows. But it's thanks almost entirely to the fact that she's pretty sure she's figured him out. Or mostly figured him out. He's not inherently evil, he's just inherently an absolute shit.
And she's spent the better part of the last decade wrangling Clint Barton. She knows how to get along with absolute shits.
The only difference this evening is that she has very clear instructions that she will be the one hitting the drink a little harder than strictly necessary. She gives him a dour look as she knocks back a shot of vodka. Her mouth is curled in a half smirk as she sets the glass down.
"When I said you were paying tonight, I meant with your own money."
If someone had told him a few years ago that he would regularly get drinks with the Black Widow he would have laughed and then probably stabbed them. Now it is one of his favorite ways to pass the time on Midgard.
With a flick of his wrist a black billfold appears in his hand. He takes another sip of the neon green cocktail and smirks.
"It is my money." He just so happens to have a wallet with the Stark Industry's logo on it.
One hell of a month, really. Natasha had hoped that becoming a global fugitive overnight would have been her last trick for a while. But as always, life seemed to have other plans for her. She hadn't thought that she would ever hear from Yelena again. Or that the Red Room was still active and significantly broadened in scope. It sort of had a way of making the global fugitive thing seem inconsequential. The chemical subjugation the new classes of Widows had been put through was unthinkinable. So was the damage that they could do if left unchecked.
And she knew it was, in many ways, her fault. She'd broken the hold Dreykov had on her. She'd escaped. Only now it felt like she'd never truly be free of the Red Room.
There was only one person she could think of that would understand. One place she could go when she and Yelena agreed to split up temporarily to reduce the chances of Dreykov getting his hands on the antidote. Which led her to a run down apartment block in Eastern Europe. Natasha left two deactivated Widow's bites hidden in the stairwell as she made her way up and took the liberty of letting herself into his apartment.
It was tempting to poke around because it the same way it always was, but she resisted the urge. Instead she sat in a chair facing the door and put one foot on the table next to the vials of antidote she'd taken with her. Her eyes closed as she turned over the extremely limited options ahead of her. It wasn't long before she heard steps outside and she opened her eyes as the door swung open. Her mouth curled in a half smile as she met Bucky's eyes. Despite the bravado of it, she was visibly exhausted.
"What's a fella like you doing in a place like this?"
When the man stepped into view through the doorway, weight balanced lightly on his heels and shoulders tight, he had a gun leveled right at her.
Nothing quite like coming home to your supposed-safehouse and finding the door unlocked to put your hackles up, stoking that paranoia, instantly slamming Bucky back into survival mode. But of course: Nat. Whatever ramshackle security he and Steve had put together, naturally she could slip through it like a spider between the cracks. This place wasn't meant to be a permanent secure bunker. It was built for temporary shelter, for picking up and moving on whenever they needed to, whenever SHIELD and the government seemed a little too close on their heels.
(A distant memory: Romania, coming home to find Captain America poking through his belongings. Except this time, it was a certain redhead making herself comfortable in his chair.)
He forced himself to breathe out; the gun lowering, and he flicked the safety back on, set it on the kitchen counter. It was a small place. Open-plan combined living room and kitchen, one bedroom with two separate twin beds tucked away, the men living like it was an ascetic dormitory. Steve was out for the night, getting supplies.
"Making do. I was gonna write in a complaint about the room service. They didn't turn down my pillows this morning."
They're both cracking wise, as if Natasha Romanoff paying him a social visit was entirely normal, and not a likely harbinger of something awful. The longer he didn't ask about it, the longer they could coexist in this little bubble just a little longer. The calm before whatever storm she's brought to their doorstep.
"My hosting skills are rusty, but you want some water?" Then, noting the exhaustion carved around her eyes: "Or a drink?"
If you could say one thing about Natasha Romanoff in the months after her escape from the Red Room, it was that she absolutely did not discriminate. So sure, maybe she had absolutely decimated a criminal cell in London. Who could blame a girl? They'd been involved in human trafficking. But she'd also picked up the odd job for some shadier figures. An assassinated scientist here, a politician framed for infidelity there. Black Widow assassins were among the most feared in the world for a reason. And now that she was freelance, without the oversight of the Red Room and its machinations, well. Business was good.
So. Her next target: an arms dealer in Eastern Europe. A minor player in the global theater, but he'd been playing both sides of the local conflicts. He had a lot of enemies. And he was about to meet his end. Too bad she'd already rigged his store of weapons to explode. She knew that the person that hired her had been hoping for a free for all raid.
She was waiting on a crowded street, dressed like a tourist as she leaned against the wall out of the flow of foot traffic. A thoughtful frown turned down the corners of her mouth as she stared at her map, as if she were lost. Finally, she turned the corner onto the less busy side street and walked right into her target. "Oh my God, I'm so clumsy, I'm so sorry," she apologized with a laugh as her map unfolded right up over his face. Her feigned American accent was flawless. With a flick of her wrist, her knife slid out of the brace hidden on her forearm underneath the sleeve of her jacket. She caught it in her palm and angled it toward his ribs.
Somebody had been making quite a name for herself and it hadn't been long before the Black Widow had attracted the attention of HYDRA. With such skills and impressive efficiency it had swiftly been decided to recruit the Black Widow and so an operative had been dispatched to track down the assassin, a task that Gemini had realised was easier said than done.
How did you find a ghost? Gemini had pondered that challenge for two fruitless weeks of searching before hitting upon a (if she said so herself) clever solution; make the ghost come to her. Klaus Ponta was a natural target, an arms smuggler neck deep in criminality, he was the bait that would finally let her hook the fish she'd been hunting.
The first sign that something was wrong came when the knife hit the man's ribs. Logically it should sink in, the man would collapse and that would be the end of that, but instead when the blade struck it met a rubbery resistance, more like a trampoline than a human rib-cage and instead of crying out in pain he smiled widely.
"Oh dumnezeule, Sarah is that you? It's been what five years? It's so good to see you again!" Given her proximity it was easy to throw his arms wide and pull Natasha into a bear hug, the grip strong enough to make the Widow's bones creak, a warning not to try and get away before he released her, save for an arm which he entwined companionably around hers.
"C'mon we have got so much to catch up on, let me treat you to lunch!" The worst part was that the big bluff Romanian hadn't even bothered to disarm her as he steered 'Sarah' forcefully in a direction that was entirely the opposite direction to the nearest cafe.
Natasha was sprawled at ease on the couch in his living room, looking for all the world as if she hadn't just interrupted him mid-date. When he emerged from his bedroom, one eyebrow arched as she looked him over, and her mouth curled into a smirk. "Did you take my advice about lying down first?" She had neatened up as much as possible for someone that had crawled in the window unannounced - hair back in a ponytail, shirt tucked in to her jeans, one of his hoodies pulled on over it to hide the bloodstain on the sleeve. "Way better than having to do the shimmy."
"Yes," he grumbles as he moves to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. He'd even added in a nice, tight purple shirt to show off those archer's muscles that got people drooling sometimes.
It didn't feel like a serious kind of, asking someone out with any kind of expectation of anything. She'd just thrown a suggestion out there and he just took it like he did any other suggestions for things he'd missed out over the course of the twentieth century. He had fully planned on checking out this taco place on his own the next day, but he didn't mind at all that he would have company.
Well, at least, until the nerves kicked in. Maybe it was just getting there a little early and sitting on his own for a bit, and having that time to overthink instead of doing what normal people do and scroll through useless things on their smartphones. Maybe it was the fact that it was quite a popular place, there's a bit of a crowd milling around, the background noise volume is up just loud enough that he could be snuck up on if he didn't check over his shoulder, and he's a little uncomfortable with how many people are standing around so close to him. Or, you know, maybe he's just stupidly stressing himself out over nothing. More likely than not, it was a little bit of everything.
At least they're not meeting at his place. And he doesn't need to explain the state his place is in. Not complete squalor or chaos but it's evident enough that he has been having good days and bad days, despite whatever semblance of having his shit together, living some kind of normal, well-adjusted civilian life than he can convey over text. Lately, there's been a few more bad days than usual. This could be the first time he's gone out for a proper meal in a couple days.
Surely that wouldn't add to any kind of nerves or anything.
Natasha remembers what it feels like. To suddenly find yourself on the other side of your long, lonely life with nothing but blood on your hands. As far as she can tell, he's handling it better than she did. It had taken months for her to settle in her skin, to stop selling her skillset to the highest bidder. But it was all relative. It never really mattered what it looked like. What mattered was how you felt when you were going through it.
She has no expectations for the evening. Well, outside of eating a frankly appalling number of tacos. Her eyes skim the crowd that's milling around outside the restaurant and her walk slows as they finally land on Bucky. There's something about the way he's sitting that makes it look like he's outside the crowd as much as he's a part of it. Maybe it's the comparative stillness - everyone else is chatting or laughing, moving around as they stand and eat their tacos. Someone is going to pop the bubble sooner or later. Might as well be a person he's expecting.
When she joins him at the bench, she sets a bag down next to him. With her red hair twisted back into a braid and a brown leather jacket on over her street clothes, most people don't make the connection between her and the work she does. She drops into the seat next to him. A half grin curls her lips as she pulls a conical party hat out of the bag and holds it out to him. The words Happy Birthday! are scrolled across it in bold gold lettering. There's even a pom pom made of tinsel affixed to the tip. "Brought you a hat," she commented as she gave it a little wiggle, as if daring him to turn it down.
[Natasha was punctual - in fact, she was already outside the bar when she texted him, making a mental map of the exits and of who went in and out.
By the time Doyle arrived, she was at the bar and dressed for the part in leather pants and riding boots. When in Rome. With a grin, she tipped her head to indicate the four tequila shots that were waiting on the bar top next to her.]
[ Luckily, today he was early instead of late. Making it about 25 minutes later. The taxi dropping him off outside the bar. Making his way inside, the short Irishman only needed a moment to look around before he saw her. Making his way over in a loud red orange button-up over shirt, over his normal brown leather disco jacket. ]
Evenin' love. [ He greeted once he took a seat, reaching for one of the shots without asking.]
Oh yeah, I have a tab here an' all. Danny, the bar tender, he owes me a c-note still. [ He added as he nodded to the bartender, who was a few people down.]
"You know, of all the ways for the world to end, I figure this is only the second or third worst."
The comment is light and bone dry, like maybe she's commenting on how beautiful the weather's been the past three days. Conversation for the sake of conversation. But the list of topics has considerably narrowed over the last - what, five or six weeks? Ever since it all went to hell.
Ever since Ulton won.
At least - at the very least - the team had been able to stop Sokovia from crashing into the earth. But Ulton had a back up plan. Twenty sentry units in a factory on the other side of the world, working around the clock to get new units up and running while the Avengers were busy in Eastern Europe. They'd been completely blindsided. The only thing they could do was scatter in teams of two and go radio silent, hoping that at least one team would survive. Maybe find a way to stop Ultron. It was a big maybe. But it was better than nothing.
Which brings them to the sad little cave they've been holed up in, waiting for some semblance of cloud cover to come back so they can continue their trek north. It's literally never this nice in Eastern Europe. It would be funny if it wasn't starting to get so annoying. Natasha's head tips to the side a little as she looks over at Steve with a half smile. "I think the first is - "
He sentence clips off abruptly when she hears the familiar sound of one of the Ultron sentries moving through the sky above. They have the patrols timing down to a matter of twenty seconds now. But more importantly - they know exactly how long it takes for the sentries to upload information back to their mainframe. Thirty seconds.
She gestures for Steve to go first, and then holds her hands up to indicate she wants to use the shield as a spring board. There will be at least two sentries. If he can get her up there to start taking out the first one, it'll call out the second so he can throw the shield at it.
Maybe. Maybe today's the day their luck runs out. But they're both determined. And she'll be damned if she gets taken out by a robot before she makes it to Siberia.
The question is delivered thoughtfully, as if she's a patron of the arts, weary in her search for the latest ingenue. Which is maybe the exact opposite of the truth, considering she is in fact a career spy sitting in the back booth of what might be the shadiest bar she's ever seen. It's shady enough that she's starting to wonder if they inadvertently wandered into one of the dens used by the Russian mob.
Which would track, given a) her luck b) Sharon's luck and c) the fact that they're still somewhere in Romania waiting for extraction after a very long, very tedious mission.
Still, they're here now, and the best way to blend in at a shitty bar is to act like a shitty person. Natasha slinks down in her seat and props her feet up next to Sharon on the bench she's sitting on. Her brow arches pointedly as she takes a swig of her beer, which - now that she's looking at it - is labeled Michelov Ultra.
Oh yeah. They're definitely in for a fun night.
"If you say yes I'm telling everyone you beat someone up with a cardboard cutout of David Hasselhoff."
"First of all, you know it was a cardboard cutout of Don Johnson, not the Hoff. If you were really my friend, you wouldn't tell such outrageous lies."
She's plucking at a loose corner of the label on her own beer. Beneath, instead of glass, is a second label in what she thinks is Serbo-Croatian. Sharon smooths the pasted-on label back over the other and casts a casual glance around the bar. "Secondly, I don't know about too old..."
Certainly neither of them seems to have acquired the wisdom they say comes with age. If they had, they would undoubtedly have thought twice about:
1. patronizing this bar; 2. even walking into this bar; 3. being here, in Romania, at all.
"... but I'm starting to think I should have kept the body armor on."
She sips at her own beer as her gaze comes to rest on a lumpy shape in a shadowy corner. A moment's puzzlement and some squinting later, she realizes it's got to be the oldest jukebox she's ever seen. "You think that thing plays any Stones?"
One day, the universe is going to stop throwing Natasha curve balls. But it doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon.
Even though she has what she likes to think of as a world class poker face, it takes every ounce of her training to keep her expression neutral when she realized that the Winter Soldier is not only James - her James - but also Steve's best friend that he lost in the war. It's an awfully small world.
After settling their score with SHIELD and HYDRA, Natasha had shared some of their history with Steve. Some of it. She could tell he was hungry for more, but not all of it was her story to tell. He deserves the opportunity to share what he wants of the bad parts. But she can at least tell Steve that there were times that they were both improbably happy, together in the Red Room.
So she spends a few weeks shaking off her existential crisis now that her whole history is available for free on the internet, and then sets off to find him. Steve and Sam are doing a decent job, but Natasha works differently than they do. And it's not long before she picks up his trail. Even if she doesn't make contact right away, preferring to study the impressions he's leaving on the world from a distance. It's not that she's delaying, exactly. Except for the fact that she is.
Because she's still mad at him. Not for shooting her in Odessa, or in DC, but for the way he'd sacrificed himself in the Red Room so she could leave. She never wanted that from him. But she has the life she has now because of that sacrifice, and it's not until she convinces herself that he deserves to know that he did some good while he was in the Red Room that she makes her move.
She lets herself into his - well, really sad little apartment - while he's out on an errand. She puts a bag of fries down on the table and then reclines in the rickety chair like it's an armchair, leaning back with her feet up on the table. When she hears him in the door, she holds her hands up so he can see her palms, though she doesn't move out of that relaxed position. Considering how well armed she is, it's the least insulting way she can think of to say 'I'm clearly not here to hurt you.'
"Hey there. Thought you could use something to eat that didn't smell like cabbage."
It was the third place he had been saying as the the memories had slowly been flooding back since he pulled Steve from the river. Too many complex feelings, too many memories or two completely different lives that had merged into this mess and each one was taking up more space in his brain that he quite knew what to do with.
Old memories from long before the war, mixed with a mess of incongruent memories from his time as The Soldier. How many times had he been wiped that those couldn't even be fit together, it was like forcing a square peg into a round hole. He tried not to focus on any of it, except he'd had to be shaking tails from Steve and his friend occasionally and that was exhausting.
All he wanted to do was to live peacefully, far away from anyone he had ever known or hurt. He didn't want to hurt anyone anymore, but that doesn't mean that he isn't prepared to be attacked at any moment, but the people that wanted him back. All they would have to do is list off a few words and he's right back to being that person yet again, the man that they can stick in the chair and turn to whatever nightmare they want him to be this week.
So he never went anywhere without his weapons. Even when he just went to the corner market to get some plums, which sounded good for one reason or another that day.
He's not expecting to be greeted by someone in his home as he opens the door and he pulls a knife from his holster instinctively the moment he senses the person, he's about to throw it when his eyes settle on her.
It's not just anyone, it's her. The girl from his memories multiple times recently, but also from before. It's Natalia, he remembers some of their time together, stolen kisses in corridors, adventures on assignments, if it's all or not he's not even sure.
"You were in D.C. as well, Little Spider?" he asks gently in Russia, lowering the knife.
I think the appreciation of implicit threat might technically still fall under the umbrella of masochism.
[Technically. There's a certain inevitability of injury in their line of work, but he does tend to end up hurt more often than she'd care to see. She moves her hand to idly trace her fingers along a scar on his shoulder. She gives him a guileless look.]
You mean other than break into your apartment and make myself at home?
[A pause, before she admits:]
Again.
[Because it's not the first time. And it certainly won't be the last.]
[ Clint just shrugs. He's not ashamed of what he likes and they've known each other long enough that Natasha knows that too. ]
You know I'm not complaining about that.
[ They've talked about it before, they've even talked about it since he's gotten home. Natasha is and will always be welcome in his home, and in his bed. He's pretty much given up on romance so it's not like she'll be getting in the way of anything. ]
There are many words to describe the multiverse. Some of the facets reflect each other, with only subtle differences - a coin flip that causes a new branch to unfurl through the darkness. Some are as different as night and day.
In one universe, Natasha Romanoff is a vampire.
In another, she's one of the few people left to fight against an endless wave of the walking dead.
In many, she leaps off the cliff on Vormir while someone she loves yells from above. Clint. Yelena. Bucky.
And in others, they grab her grappling line before she thinks of it and jump first.
This Natasha returns from Vormir with a red stone clutched in her hand and an ache in her jaw that's easier to tend to than the ache in her chest. They fight Thanos. They win. And life...goes on. Sort of. Fury used to tell people that she's comfortable with everything, and she doesn't like that she's finally found the thing she doesn't know how to bounce back from. So she retires.
And it doesn't suit her, exactly, because sure - they did it. They brought back the world. But there's still a hole where her world should be. She finds a way to live around it. And she keeps taking missions (because of course she does). She's tailing an undercover Skrull when the world fractures around her, cracks of light opening up to another sky and her mind is working a hundred miles a minute to try to figure out what the hell is happening and -
That's definitely a weird little bald dude watching her through the crack, reaching for her and -
She's falling again. For just a second, she wonders if she's back on Vormir, and then the world rights itself and she lands in an ungainly pile on the ground.
There's a beat of silence and then she takes a deep, shuddering breath as she lifts her head and looks directly at Bucky. There's no disguising the absolute surprise and confusion in her expression.
Bucky Barnes doesn't know much about the multiverse beyond the fact that it exists in some strange mess that Banner was ranting on about it. In truth he could only half pay attention in the pain of watching Steve move on to the past to live his life.
He misses his friend, but that's not the only thing he misses. Even though they'd returned him from the blip there was still something missing, a hole in his heart that he couldn't put a finger on or even explain why it was there. He writes it off to just the entire war that had happened, to the changes as he tries to go on with his life.
He helps Sam finally take the shield that Steve gave him. He speaks with Zemo about so many doors that had been left open.
He should have closer but there's still something no quite there.
Instead he's taken to watching the stars, even if he doesn't know why. He sits on the roof late at night watching them until one day there is a flash and Natasha thuds down right in front of him. His eyes go huge.
[It's hard to picture herself in that setting, and she was there. There's days it feels like a peculiar dream. Other times she thinks she could reach out and brush her fingers over the fabric of the curtains in the living room. The side effect of those long years in the Red Room means that many parts of her life have the same feeling. Real but not real all at the same time.
Her eyes catch those little stifled movements, and she takes another quick glance at him. Like he's trying to hold something in - clamping down on it so hard it squirms between his fingers. She understands the urge. And moreover, she thinks she gets where it comes from. Her hands fall still for a moment as she listens to him, still holding the underside of his arm as he grinds up the words.] Just tell me when.
[And though it's a rare crack in her easy composure, she hesitates before she continues. What she's saying is a lot. And she knows it's a lot. But she has to be honest.] I think I should say there are things I do miss about the Red Room. I'm grateful in a way for the skills that I have, and that I can use them to do some good in the world. And there's times I miss not being accountable for what I do. But I know I don't want my life to be like that. [Accountability hurts, but it's the part that's real. Just real. And that's what's important.
She lowers her head again to resume her work, carefully manipulating the slime around so she can keep pulling it off.] If there's something you want to tell me, I'll listen. It doesn't have to be now. Just wanted to make sure you knew.
[He makes eye contact again when she talks about the Red Room. He can't imagine this is easy for her by any stretch of the imagination. It's not like she had a lot more time than he did to work through... everything. But he does have bad habits of sweeping everything under the rug and saying everything's fine over and over again like a broken record until nobody questions it anymore. She's probably a little less inclined to stick her fingers in her ears and do the same.]
Yeah. [He doesn't even know where to start, really. He knows this isn't transactional - it's not like she offers him something and he's obligated to give her something back. It doesn't work that way.]
It's just. [His face scrunches up and his other hand moves, grabbing the fabric of his pants over the top of his thigh, pulling down a bit before letting go again.] Telling you won't fix anything. And then you have to live with it, too.
I'll have you know there's nothing unkempt about a handlebar mustache. You might even argue that it's more dignified than a party hat. I should be back home by then. I want to pick up food.
[Every plan she makes comes with that unspoken unless. There's an endless number of things that might come up. It makes it hard for her to be in the lives of normal people. Lucky, then, that most of the people in her life aren't normal. Except for her crotchety old neighbor that is by turns suspicious of Natasha and concerned for her well being.
Which, honestly, is a pretty fair assessment on a day to day basis.
Her brow quirks at his question, and she finally draws the lines between the different items he's requested. She lets out a quiet chuckle.] We're not going to shock your landlord. Unless he pulls a gun on you. [She straightens up, ambling towards him with a thoughtful expression on her face. Finally, she gives him a grin.]
Let's start slow. He's a landlord, so the place that will hurt the most for you to hit him is in his wallet. I'll introduce myself as your lawyer. You glower. Maybe break something. [One shoulder lifts in an easy shrug.] We'll escalate from there if we need to. Maybe I can get him to forgive your rent for a few months. [It's a little left from the center of menacing, but she's confident in her assessment. People don't get into landlording because they don't want to rake in money hand over fist. Typically by any means necessary.
Something that she knows more than a little bit about.]
[ he gives nat a slightly helpless shrug, ceding this mission to her. and what a mission it is, harassing a lowlife landlord for not doing his job. as far as missions go, he's done worlds worse. ]
No punching?
[ he's kidding. mostly. he rolls one shoulder and turns his gaze inward, listing off what he knows about the landlord. he's not a mysterious man by any means, and nat would likely figure him out with one look - bucky certainly did - but recon is always essential to every plan. ]
Phyllis Temberton, forty-seven, lives off-building, has a brownstone down the street with the second floor sublet to a mistress. Insecure about his given name, has two kids who won't talk to him, eldest is starting college this fall. Thrice divorced, twice bankrupt, charges rent 14% higher than the rest of the street. [ a pause. ] The building's access to the thoroughway is the selling point.
He's allergic to chicken. Late-onset diabetes, sciatica on the left leg.
[ this is like taking candy from a baby, if the baby weighs two hundred and four pounds. ]
Oddly enough, there's no fear associated with the memory. It's almost like flying. She knows with bone deep certainty that she's doing the right thing. Clint has three kids. A wife. She can't go back to Earth with a stone clutched in her hand and an empty heart. So she just pushes off that cliff face and lets go. The team will bring everyone back. Clint will find Yelena. Everyone's going to be fine.
(Except her.
But that's okay. She's never expected her story to end with happily ever after.)
Instead it ends with a flash of pain, and the bolt of a flat world washed in red (is it blood? it's always blood) and the distant sounds of a language she can't understand and -
The world inverts around her.
The sky is red and flat and it goes on forever and below her is a dark swirl of stars and she doesn't even have enough time to process what the hell is happening before she crash lands into an alley.
There's a long pause. A rat scurries underneath the dumpster shoved haphazardly against the wall.
"Okay. That hurt."
From there on out, pretty much nothing makes sense. She's in New York, but she's supposed to be dead. She has no bank account. No apartment. Nothing to her name but some scattered memorials and a shattered network that she at least is able to tap for a few hundred dollars and a shitty hotel room in the Bronx. She just missed Christmas in the city and everywhere she goes she can see people gearing themselves up for the next holiday at the end of the weekend. And she can't walk more than five minutes without overhearing some snippet about Hawkeye and Fisk. She finds a TikTok of Yelena rappelling down the side of a building set to Chandelier.
Which makes her next step pretty obvious.
It takes a couple of days for her to pin down Yelena's movements, to find a place she can intercept her that won't end with Yelena trying to kill her before she can tell her what happened. It's been years. She's been dead. (She is dead? Existentially speaking, she's not sure how mentally sound she's feeling these days.) It's going to be a weird reunion.
It's technically the 31st. But it's late enough at night that you could get away with calling it early in the morning. One of those rare hours that New York is almost quiet. Natasha picks up Yelena's trail somewhere in Manhattan and from a block behind her, she lets out that whistle, the one thing they can carry with them from the only good part of their childhood.
Everything had happened to fast. The assignment from Val. Meeting Kate Bishop. Her tunnel vision on Barton.
Time drags from the moment she departed from the man that had been important to her sister. The same man she had tried to kill.
There is a hole inside of her chest she knows she can never fill again. It’s so hard not to notice it, but she tries. She tries to hard to ignore it because she doesn’t want to face that pain. She isn’t ready to let go of it, because letting go of the pain feels like letting go of her sister.
She isn’t ready. She’s not ready yet. She’s not sure she ever will be.
The night air is crisp, cold enough that her breath is visible is little puffs as she makes her way down the street. There’s a party- Kate invited her. It’s a whole thing. She’s trying not to think too deeply about it yet.
She echoes the sound, the second half of that too-familiar whistle. Only as the sound disappears into common street sounds of the city does she realize no one else should know that call sign.
The whole world seems to slow down as she stops and turns to look over her shoulder. Her eyes scan the sidewalk for the source of the noise. It’s empty, except…
Something in the shadows shifts and catches in the streetlight.
There’s someone in the alley.
Yelena’s breath is caught in her throat. Her eyes sting with tears she refuses to allow to fall. But she still manages to keep her voice steady and even as she demands, “Show your face!”
The week following New Year's Eve goes by surprisingly fast. Natasha secures their spot at the supper club for Saturday, bringing the evening up to a total of 25 attendees. There seems to be some trouble brewing in DC, and she's on hold, thinking that she might have to cancel so she can fly down there to literally kick someone's ass when Fury tells her that the situation is "resolved." The information is so sparse that she has little doubt that a second shit show will be happening by the end of the month.
But that's a problem for later.
Saturday rolls around along with the email that tells her they'll be spending the evening in Manhattan. Natasha dresses in a pair of leather pants with a silky emerald green wrap top and the dressiest ankle boots she has that she can still walk in. She's just finishing up her lipstick when she hears a knock at the door, and her phone buzzes at the same time.
It's only a few moments later when she pulls the door open for Bucky with a smile. "Look at you picking me up at my door. Come in for a second, I just got the notification for where we're going." She steps back so he can enter the front hall of her little two floor townhouse apartment, eyes down on her screen so she can skim the notification. Her smile widens. "Looks like we're going to the Hall des Lumières. Have you heard of it?"
Bucky whistles softly at the sight Natasha makes when she opens the door, glancing from her boots up to her face, light enough to land somewhere between teasing and flattering. He hopes, anyway. It's not quite as flashy as her New Year's Eve party dress, but he likes it.
The whistle could also be for their destination. If pressed, he might go with that story.
He cleans up pretty well himself, exchanging his leather jacket for a dark peacoat and slacks. "I know where it is," he tells her. "First time I'll be inside, though. Good thing I dressed up."
Sounds familiar. Guess it's good you chose a cat for me instead of a dog.
[ That's as far as he'll admit to wanting company from time to time, but he considers himself fairly independent. And it sounds like it's pretty accurate for her as well, not that he'll say that one be it in writing or out loud. ]
Did it take you long to settle on that name or did you just know?
And I don't wanna feel responsible if they got their hands on it and hit someone with it. Why not thirty? We could get the Spider-Kid to shut up for that long.
[ Half the shit he gives to that kid is a little more put on than anything but sometimes he thinks the kid needs to slow down - he talks too fast for him to understand at times - that a nap might do some good. ]
Knowing her she'll talk about if I'm getting slow in my old age too.
[ Is it confidence if he knows from his interactions with Yelena she'll make a joke about it and he's planning on using that distraction as his strategy in whacking her with the cane?
And he knows she'll give him the mead anyway, but he can humor her by playing along with it. ]
Clint says "bonus points for pizza." See, we were just convinced that the moonshine, arrows, and blindfolds would make it less appealing. Should've known better.
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tfln overflow - uncannyspiderman
She’s not particularly happy that she had to ask for help, but Peter has always been a decent guy and she can think of worse people to bring in. She’s leaning against the far wall in the dark, and she watches as he climbs in through the broken window. Once he seems to have avoided the minefield of broken glass, she steps away from the wall.
“What’s a fella like you doing in a place like this?” Her voice is full of dry humor. It’s a stark counterpoint to her limping gait, disjointed shoulder, and the blood smeared on her uniform. There’s a beat before she tacks on, “most of it’s not mine.”
sorry for the delay.
When he arrives, eyes moving everywhere, spider-sense loud in his ears, he carefully enters the place she is at, his senses reading someone dimly at 3 o'clock. As he leaps from the wall to land past the broken glass, he sees her step out of the dark, wondering how she does that!
Peter smiles as he sees her, eyes curious as he eyes her limp. Seeing her at all not her usual kick-ass self make him feel rather uncertain and he nods. "Well, someone broke my favorite spider, and I thought I would come to do something about that."
He is rather glad the blood is mostly not hers, and nods. "I assume the other guy, or gal, is worse off?"
Peter motioned toward a spot for her to sit down so he could work. "How bad is it?'
no worries!
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for cuttingremark
And she's spent the better part of the last decade wrangling Clint Barton. She knows how to get along with absolute shits.
The only difference this evening is that she has very clear instructions that she will be the one hitting the drink a little harder than strictly necessary. She gives him a dour look as she knocks back a shot of vodka. Her mouth is curled in a half smirk as she sets the glass down.
"When I said you were paying tonight, I meant with your own money."
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With a flick of his wrist a black billfold appears in his hand. He takes another sip of the neon green cocktail and smirks.
"It is my money." He just so happens to have a wallet with the Stark Industry's logo on it.
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for armeyets - black widow movie spoilers below!
One hell of a month, really. Natasha had hoped that becoming a global fugitive overnight would have been her last trick for a while. But as always, life seemed to have other plans for her. She hadn't thought that she would ever hear from Yelena again. Or that the Red Room was still active and significantly broadened in scope. It sort of had a way of making the global fugitive thing seem inconsequential. The chemical subjugation the new classes of Widows had been put through was unthinkinable. So was the damage that they could do if left unchecked.
And she knew it was, in many ways, her fault. She'd broken the hold Dreykov had on her. She'd escaped. Only now it felt like she'd never truly be free of the Red Room.
There was only one person she could think of that would understand. One place she could go when she and Yelena agreed to split up temporarily to reduce the chances of Dreykov getting his hands on the antidote. Which led her to a run down apartment block in Eastern Europe. Natasha left two deactivated Widow's bites hidden in the stairwell as she made her way up and took the liberty of letting herself into his apartment.
It was tempting to poke around because it the same way it always was, but she resisted the urge. Instead she sat in a chair facing the door and put one foot on the table next to the vials of antidote she'd taken with her. Her eyes closed as she turned over the extremely limited options ahead of her. It wasn't long before she heard steps outside and she opened her eyes as the door swung open. Her mouth curled in a half smile as she met Bucky's eyes. Despite the bravado of it, she was visibly exhausted.
"What's a fella like you doing in a place like this?"
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Nothing quite like coming home to your supposed-safehouse and finding the door unlocked to put your hackles up, stoking that paranoia, instantly slamming Bucky back into survival mode. But of course: Nat. Whatever ramshackle security he and Steve had put together, naturally she could slip through it like a spider between the cracks. This place wasn't meant to be a permanent secure bunker. It was built for temporary shelter, for picking up and moving on whenever they needed to, whenever SHIELD and the government seemed a little too close on their heels.
(A distant memory: Romania, coming home to find Captain America poking through his belongings. Except this time, it was a certain redhead making herself comfortable in his chair.)
He forced himself to breathe out; the gun lowering, and he flicked the safety back on, set it on the kitchen counter. It was a small place. Open-plan combined living room and kitchen, one bedroom with two separate twin beds tucked away, the men living like it was an ascetic dormitory. Steve was out for the night, getting supplies.
"Making do. I was gonna write in a complaint about the room service. They didn't turn down my pillows this morning."
They're both cracking wise, as if Natasha Romanoff paying him a social visit was entirely normal, and not a likely harbinger of something awful. The longer he didn't ask about it, the longer they could coexist in this little bubble just a little longer. The calm before whatever storm she's brought to their doorstep.
"My hosting skills are rusty, but you want some water?" Then, noting the exhaustion carved around her eyes: "Or a drink?"
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whew sorry for the delay, life blew up
no worries!
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for stretchy_girl
So. Her next target: an arms dealer in Eastern Europe. A minor player in the global theater, but he'd been playing both sides of the local conflicts. He had a lot of enemies. And he was about to meet his end. Too bad she'd already rigged his store of weapons to explode. She knew that the person that hired her had been hoping for a free for all raid.
She was waiting on a crowded street, dressed like a tourist as she leaned against the wall out of the flow of foot traffic. A thoughtful frown turned down the corners of her mouth as she stared at her map, as if she were lost. Finally, she turned the corner onto the less busy side street and walked right into her target. "Oh my God, I'm so clumsy, I'm so sorry," she apologized with a laugh as her map unfolded right up over his face. Her feigned American accent was flawless. With a flick of her wrist, her knife slid out of the brace hidden on her forearm underneath the sleeve of her jacket. She caught it in her palm and angled it toward his ribs.
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How did you find a ghost? Gemini had pondered that challenge for two fruitless weeks of searching before hitting upon a (if she said so herself) clever solution; make the ghost come to her. Klaus Ponta was a natural target, an arms smuggler neck deep in criminality, he was the bait that would finally let her hook the fish she'd been hunting.
The first sign that something was wrong came when the knife hit the man's ribs. Logically it should sink in, the man would collapse and that would be the end of that, but instead when the blade struck it met a rubbery resistance, more like a trampoline than a human rib-cage and instead of crying out in pain he smiled widely.
"Oh dumnezeule, Sarah is that you? It's been what five years? It's so good to see you again!" Given her proximity it was easy to throw his arms wide and pull Natasha into a bear hug, the grip strong enough to make the Widow's bones creak, a warning not to try and get away before he released her, save for an arm which he entwined companionably around hers.
"C'mon we have got so much to catch up on, let me treat you to lunch!" The worst part was that the big bluff Romanian hadn't even bothered to disarm her as he steered 'Sarah' forcefully in a direction that was entirely the opposite direction to the nearest cafe.
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for wisecracking_shot
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"You feeling a bit better?"
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Well, at least, until the nerves kicked in. Maybe it was just getting there a little early and sitting on his own for a bit, and having that time to overthink instead of doing what normal people do and scroll through useless things on their smartphones. Maybe it was the fact that it was quite a popular place, there's a bit of a crowd milling around, the background noise volume is up just loud enough that he could be snuck up on if he didn't check over his shoulder, and he's a little uncomfortable with how many people are standing around so close to him. Or, you know, maybe he's just stupidly stressing himself out over nothing. More likely than not, it was a little bit of everything.
At least they're not meeting at his place. And he doesn't need to explain the state his place is in. Not complete squalor or chaos but it's evident enough that he has been having good days and bad days, despite whatever semblance of having his shit together, living some kind of normal, well-adjusted civilian life than he can convey over text. Lately, there's been a few more bad days than usual. This could be the first time he's gone out for a proper meal in a couple days.
Surely that wouldn't add to any kind of nerves or anything.
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She has no expectations for the evening. Well, outside of eating a frankly appalling number of tacos. Her eyes skim the crowd that's milling around outside the restaurant and her walk slows as they finally land on Bucky. There's something about the way he's sitting that makes it look like he's outside the crowd as much as he's a part of it. Maybe it's the comparative stillness - everyone else is chatting or laughing, moving around as they stand and eat their tacos. Someone is going to pop the bubble sooner or later. Might as well be a person he's expecting.
When she joins him at the bench, she sets a bag down next to him. With her red hair twisted back into a braid and a brown leather jacket on over her street clothes, most people don't make the connection between her and the work she does. She drops into the seat next to him. A half grin curls her lips as she pulls a conical party hat out of the bag and holds it out to him. The words Happy Birthday! are scrolled across it in bold gold lettering. There's even a pom pom made of tinsel affixed to the tip. "Brought you a hat," she commented as she gave it a little wiggle, as if daring him to turn it down.
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for dublinbrogue
[Natasha was punctual - in fact, she was already outside the bar when she texted him, making a mental map of the exits and of who went in and out.
By the time Doyle arrived, she was at the bar and dressed for the part in leather pants and riding boots. When in Rome. With a grin, she tipped her head to indicate the four tequila shots that were waiting on the bar top next to her.]
Have you been here before?
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Evenin' love. [ He greeted once he took a seat, reaching for one of the shots without asking.]
Oh yeah, I have a tab here an' all. Danny, the bar tender, he owes me a c-note still. [ He added as he nodded to the bartender, who was a few people down.]
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for abide - ultron won au
The comment is light and bone dry, like maybe she's commenting on how beautiful the weather's been the past three days. Conversation for the sake of conversation. But the list of topics has considerably narrowed over the last - what, five or six weeks? Ever since it all went to hell.
Ever since Ulton won.
At least - at the very least - the team had been able to stop Sokovia from crashing into the earth. But Ulton had a back up plan. Twenty sentry units in a factory on the other side of the world, working around the clock to get new units up and running while the Avengers were busy in Eastern Europe. They'd been completely blindsided. The only thing they could do was scatter in teams of two and go radio silent, hoping that at least one team would survive. Maybe find a way to stop Ultron. It was a big maybe. But it was better than nothing.
Which brings them to the sad little cave they've been holed up in, waiting for some semblance of cloud cover to come back so they can continue their trek north. It's literally never this nice in Eastern Europe. It would be funny if it wasn't starting to get so annoying. Natasha's head tips to the side a little as she looks over at Steve with a half smile. "I think the first is - "
He sentence clips off abruptly when she hears the familiar sound of one of the Ultron sentries moving through the sky above. They have the patrols timing down to a matter of twenty seconds now. But more importantly - they know exactly how long it takes for the sentries to upload information back to their mainframe. Thirty seconds.
She gestures for Steve to go first, and then holds her hands up to indicate she wants to use the shield as a spring board. There will be at least two sentries. If he can get her up there to start taking out the first one, it'll call out the second so he can throw the shield at it.
Maybe. Maybe today's the day their luck runs out. But they're both determined. And she'll be damned if she gets taken out by a robot before she makes it to Siberia.
for worldsbestburger - two spies walk into a bar
The question is delivered thoughtfully, as if she's a patron of the arts, weary in her search for the latest ingenue. Which is maybe the exact opposite of the truth, considering she is in fact a career spy sitting in the back booth of what might be the shadiest bar she's ever seen. It's shady enough that she's starting to wonder if they inadvertently wandered into one of the dens used by the Russian mob.
Which would track, given a) her luck b) Sharon's luck and c) the fact that they're still somewhere in Romania waiting for extraction after a very long, very tedious mission.
Still, they're here now, and the best way to blend in at a shitty bar is to act like a shitty person. Natasha slinks down in her seat and props her feet up next to Sharon on the bench she's sitting on. Her brow arches pointedly as she takes a swig of her beer, which - now that she's looking at it - is labeled Michelov Ultra.
Oh yeah. They're definitely in for a fun night.
"If you say yes I'm telling everyone you beat someone up with a cardboard cutout of David Hasselhoff."
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She's plucking at a loose corner of the label on her own beer. Beneath, instead of glass, is a second label in what she thinks is Serbo-Croatian. Sharon smooths the pasted-on label back over the other and casts a casual glance around the bar. "Secondly, I don't know about too old..."
Certainly neither of them seems to have acquired the wisdom they say comes with age. If they had, they would undoubtedly have thought twice about:
1. patronizing this bar;
2. even walking into this bar;
3. being here, in Romania, at all.
"... but I'm starting to think I should have kept the body armor on."
She sips at her own beer as her gaze comes to rest on a lumpy shape in a shadowy corner. A moment's puzzlement and some squinting later, she realizes it's got to be the oldest jukebox she's ever seen. "You think that thing plays any Stones?"
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for daybreak19 - pre-civil war au
Even though she has what she likes to think of as a world class poker face, it takes every ounce of her training to keep her expression neutral when she realized that the Winter Soldier is not only James - her James - but also Steve's best friend that he lost in the war. It's an awfully small world.
After settling their score with SHIELD and HYDRA, Natasha had shared some of their history with Steve. Some of it. She could tell he was hungry for more, but not all of it was her story to tell. He deserves the opportunity to share what he wants of the bad parts. But she can at least tell Steve that there were times that they were both improbably happy, together in the Red Room.
So she spends a few weeks shaking off her existential crisis now that her whole history is available for free on the internet, and then sets off to find him. Steve and Sam are doing a decent job, but Natasha works differently than they do. And it's not long before she picks up his trail. Even if she doesn't make contact right away, preferring to study the impressions he's leaving on the world from a distance. It's not that she's delaying, exactly. Except for the fact that she is.
Because she's still mad at him. Not for shooting her in Odessa, or in DC, but for the way he'd sacrificed himself in the Red Room so she could leave. She never wanted that from him. But she has the life she has now because of that sacrifice, and it's not until she convinces herself that he deserves to know that he did some good while he was in the Red Room that she makes her move.
She lets herself into his - well, really sad little apartment - while he's out on an errand. She puts a bag of fries down on the table and then reclines in the rickety chair like it's an armchair, leaning back with her feet up on the table. When she hears him in the door, she holds her hands up so he can see her palms, though she doesn't move out of that relaxed position. Considering how well armed she is, it's the least insulting way she can think of to say 'I'm clearly not here to hurt you.'
"Hey there. Thought you could use something to eat that didn't smell like cabbage."
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Old memories from long before the war, mixed with a mess of incongruent memories from his time as The Soldier. How many times had he been wiped that those couldn't even be fit together, it was like forcing a square peg into a round hole. He tried not to focus on any of it, except he'd had to be shaking tails from Steve and his friend occasionally and that was exhausting.
All he wanted to do was to live peacefully, far away from anyone he had ever known or hurt. He didn't want to hurt anyone anymore, but that doesn't mean that he isn't prepared to be attacked at any moment, but the people that wanted him back. All they would have to do is list off a few words and he's right back to being that person yet again, the man that they can stick in the chair and turn to whatever nightmare they want him to be this week.
So he never went anywhere without his weapons. Even when he just went to the corner market to get some plums, which sounded good for one reason or another that day.
He's not expecting to be greeted by someone in his home as he opens the door and he pulls a knife from his holster instinctively the moment he senses the person, he's about to throw it when his eyes settle on her.
It's not just anyone, it's her. The girl from his memories multiple times recently, but also from before. It's Natalia, he remembers some of their time together, stolen kisses in corridors, adventures on assignments, if it's all or not he's not even sure.
"You were in D.C. as well, Little Spider?" he asks gently in Russia, lowering the knife.
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tfln overflow - deathbeforedecaf
I think the appreciation of implicit threat might technically still fall under the umbrella of masochism.
[Technically. There's a certain inevitability of injury in their line of work, but he does tend to end up hurt more often than she'd care to see. She moves her hand to idly trace her fingers along a scar on his shoulder. She gives him a guileless look.]
You mean other than break into your apartment and make myself at home?
[A pause, before she admits:]
Again.
[Because it's not the first time. And it certainly won't be the last.]
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You know I'm not complaining about that.
[ They've talked about it before, they've even talked about it since he's gotten home. Natasha is and will always be welcome in his home, and in his bed. He's pretty much given up on romance so it's not like she'll be getting in the way of anything. ]
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tfln overflow - kalashnikov
Oh yeah?
[A moment later, he gets a selfie of her slumped on her couch wearing sunglasses and an oversized sweatshirt with the hood pulled over her head.]
I'm thinking of calling it 'how not to blend in in a crowd.'
<3
( It's cute! )
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for daybreak19 - multiverse shenanigan au
In one universe, Natasha Romanoff is a vampire.
In another, she's one of the few people left to fight against an endless wave of the walking dead.
In many, she leaps off the cliff on Vormir while someone she loves yells from above. Clint. Yelena. Bucky.
And in others, they grab her grappling line before she thinks of it and jump first.
This Natasha returns from Vormir with a red stone clutched in her hand and an ache in her jaw that's easier to tend to than the ache in her chest. They fight Thanos. They win. And life...goes on. Sort of. Fury used to tell people that she's comfortable with everything, and she doesn't like that she's finally found the thing she doesn't know how to bounce back from. So she retires.
And it doesn't suit her, exactly, because sure - they did it. They brought back the world. But there's still a hole where her world should be. She finds a way to live around it. And she keeps taking missions (because of course she does). She's tailing an undercover Skrull when the world fractures around her, cracks of light opening up to another sky and her mind is working a hundred miles a minute to try to figure out what the hell is happening and -
That's definitely a weird little bald dude watching her through the crack, reaching for her and -
She's falling again. For just a second, she wonders if she's back on Vormir, and then the world rights itself and she lands in an ungainly pile on the ground.
There's a beat of silence and then she takes a deep, shuddering breath as she lifts her head and looks directly at Bucky. There's no disguising the absolute surprise and confusion in her expression.
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He misses his friend, but that's not the only thing he misses. Even though they'd returned him from the blip there was still something missing, a hole in his heart that he couldn't put a finger on or even explain why it was there. He writes it off to just the entire war that had happened, to the changes as he tries to go on with his life.
He helps Sam finally take the shield that Steve gave him. He speaks with Zemo about so many doors that had been left open.
He should have closer but there's still something no quite there.
Instead he's taken to watching the stars, even if he doesn't know why. He sits on the roof late at night watching them until one day there is a flash and Natasha thuds down right in front of him. His eyes go huge.
"You're supposed to be dead."
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Sorry holidays got busy!
no worries! i hope you enjoyed the holiday!
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tfln overflow - freakymagoo
[It's hard to picture herself in that setting, and she was there. There's days it feels like a peculiar dream. Other times she thinks she could reach out and brush her fingers over the fabric of the curtains in the living room. The side effect of those long years in the Red Room means that many parts of her life have the same feeling. Real but not real all at the same time.
Her eyes catch those little stifled movements, and she takes another quick glance at him. Like he's trying to hold something in - clamping down on it so hard it squirms between his fingers. She understands the urge. And moreover, she thinks she gets where it comes from. Her hands fall still for a moment as she listens to him, still holding the underside of his arm as he grinds up the words.] Just tell me when.
[And though it's a rare crack in her easy composure, she hesitates before she continues. What she's saying is a lot. And she knows it's a lot. But she has to be honest.] I think I should say there are things I do miss about the Red Room. I'm grateful in a way for the skills that I have, and that I can use them to do some good in the world. And there's times I miss not being accountable for what I do. But I know I don't want my life to be like that. [Accountability hurts, but it's the part that's real. Just real. And that's what's important.
She lowers her head again to resume her work, carefully manipulating the slime around so she can keep pulling it off.] If there's something you want to tell me, I'll listen. It doesn't have to be now. Just wanted to make sure you knew.
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Yeah. [He doesn't even know where to start, really. He knows this isn't transactional - it's not like she offers him something and he's obligated to give her something back. It doesn't work that way.]
It's just. [His face scrunches up and his other hand moves, grabbing the fabric of his pants over the top of his thigh, pulling down a bit before letting go again.] Telling you won't fix anything. And then you have to live with it, too.
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I don't even know how to write this content warning
i suggest "beautifully written deep russian trauma" because that was a wonderful/heartbreaking read
we only serve trauma here!
and it's piping hot!
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tfln overflow - mischief_maker
I'll have you know there's nothing unkempt about a handlebar mustache.
You might even argue that it's more dignified than a party hat.
I should be back home by then. I want to pick up food.
Thank you!
I will see you then.
[ Loki couldn't even fault his logic, it's what he would do. ]
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tfln overflow - rust
[Every plan she makes comes with that unspoken unless. There's an endless number of things that might come up. It makes it hard for her to be in the lives of normal people. Lucky, then, that most of the people in her life aren't normal. Except for her crotchety old neighbor that is by turns suspicious of Natasha and concerned for her well being.
Which, honestly, is a pretty fair assessment on a day to day basis.
Her brow quirks at his question, and she finally draws the lines between the different items he's requested. She lets out a quiet chuckle.] We're not going to shock your landlord. Unless he pulls a gun on you. [She straightens up, ambling towards him with a thoughtful expression on her face. Finally, she gives him a grin.]
Let's start slow. He's a landlord, so the place that will hurt the most for you to hit him is in his wallet. I'll introduce myself as your lawyer. You glower. Maybe break something. [One shoulder lifts in an easy shrug.] We'll escalate from there if we need to. Maybe I can get him to forgive your rent for a few months. [It's a little left from the center of menacing, but she's confident in her assessment. People don't get into landlording because they don't want to rake in money hand over fist. Typically by any means necessary.
Something that she knows more than a little bit about.]
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No punching?
[ he's kidding. mostly. he rolls one shoulder and turns his gaze inward, listing off what he knows about the landlord. he's not a mysterious man by any means, and nat would likely figure him out with one look - bucky certainly did - but recon is always essential to every plan. ]
Phyllis Temberton, forty-seven, lives off-building, has a brownstone down the street with the second floor sublet to a mistress. Insecure about his given name, has two kids who won't talk to him, eldest is starting college this fall. Thrice divorced, twice bankrupt, charges rent 14% higher than the rest of the street. [ a pause. ] The building's access to the thoroughway is the selling point.
He's allergic to chicken. Late-onset diabetes, sciatica on the left leg.
[ this is like taking candy from a baby, if the baby weighs two hundred and four pounds. ]
He might hit on you.
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tfln overflow - workingtheory
That's the spirit.
I don't have tequila shots in me tonight, but I'll come grab a beer and encourage you in taking shots.
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for waytodie - fix it but still make it hurt au!
Oddly enough, there's no fear associated with the memory. It's almost like flying. She knows with bone deep certainty that she's doing the right thing. Clint has three kids. A wife. She can't go back to Earth with a stone clutched in her hand and an empty heart. So she just pushes off that cliff face and lets go. The team will bring everyone back. Clint will find Yelena. Everyone's going to be fine.
(Except her.
But that's okay. She's never expected her story to end with happily ever after.)
Instead it ends with a flash of pain, and the bolt of a flat world washed in red (is it blood? it's always blood) and the distant sounds of a language she can't understand and -
The world inverts around her.
The sky is red and flat and it goes on forever and below her is a dark swirl of stars and she doesn't even have enough time to process what the hell is happening before she crash lands into an alley.
There's a long pause. A rat scurries underneath the dumpster shoved haphazardly against the wall.
"Okay. That hurt."
From there on out, pretty much nothing makes sense. She's in New York, but she's supposed to be dead. She has no bank account. No apartment. Nothing to her name but some scattered memorials and a shattered network that she at least is able to tap for a few hundred dollars and a shitty hotel room in the Bronx. She just missed Christmas in the city and everywhere she goes she can see people gearing themselves up for the next holiday at the end of the weekend. And she can't walk more than five minutes without overhearing some snippet about Hawkeye and Fisk. She finds a TikTok of Yelena rappelling down the side of a building set to Chandelier.
Which makes her next step pretty obvious.
It takes a couple of days for her to pin down Yelena's movements, to find a place she can intercept her that won't end with Yelena trying to kill her before she can tell her what happened. It's been years. She's been dead. (She is dead? Existentially speaking, she's not sure how mentally sound she's feeling these days.) It's going to be a weird reunion.
It's technically the 31st. But it's late enough at night that you could get away with calling it early in the morning. One of those rare hours that New York is almost quiet. Natasha picks up Yelena's trail somewhere in Manhattan and from a block behind her, she lets out that whistle, the one thing they can carry with them from the only good part of their childhood.
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Time drags from the moment she departed from the man that had been important to her sister. The same man she had tried to kill.
There is a hole inside of her chest she knows she can never fill again. It’s so hard not to notice it, but she tries. She tries to hard to ignore it because she doesn’t want to face that pain. She isn’t ready to let go of it, because letting go of the pain feels like letting go of her sister.
She isn’t ready.
She’s not ready yet.
She’s not sure she ever will be.
The night air is crisp, cold enough that her breath is visible is little puffs as she makes her way down the street. There’s a party- Kate invited her. It’s a whole thing. She’s trying not to think too deeply about it yet.
She echoes the sound, the second half of that too-familiar whistle. Only as the sound disappears into common street sounds of the city does she realize no one else should know that call sign.
The whole world seems to slow down as she stops and turns to look over her shoulder. Her eyes scan the sidewalk for the source of the noise. It’s empty, except…
Something in the shadows shifts and catches in the streetlight.
There’s someone in the alley.
Yelena’s breath is caught in her throat. Her eyes sting with tears she refuses to allow to fall. But she still manages to keep her voice steady and even as she demands, “Show your face!”
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for leftcold - supper club
But that's a problem for later.
Saturday rolls around along with the email that tells her they'll be spending the evening in Manhattan. Natasha dresses in a pair of leather pants with a silky emerald green wrap top and the dressiest ankle boots she has that she can still walk in. She's just finishing up her lipstick when she hears a knock at the door, and her phone buzzes at the same time.
It's only a few moments later when she pulls the door open for Bucky with a smile. "Look at you picking me up at my door. Come in for a second, I just got the notification for where we're going." She steps back so he can enter the front hall of her little two floor townhouse apartment, eyes down on her screen so she can skim the notification. Her smile widens. "Looks like we're going to the Hall des Lumières. Have you heard of it?"
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The whistle could also be for their destination. If pressed, he might go with that story.
He cleans up pretty well himself, exchanging his leather jacket for a dark peacoat and slacks. "I know where it is," he tells her. "First time I'll be inside, though. Good thing I dressed up."
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tfln overflow - bionicstaringmachine
They're pretty independent. But they still like having company.
[Don't worry, Barnes. She has cat sitter recommendations thanks to her own stray-that's-not-really-a-stray.]
Thankfully. There was no back up plan.
We get along well. I call her Liho.
[Yes, as in the embodiment of misfortune in Slavic mythology. She thinks she's hilarious.]
ty for moving ❤️, i was mobile at the time!
[ That's as far as he'll admit to wanting company from time to time, but he considers himself fairly independent. And it sounds like it's pretty accurate for her as well, not that he'll say that one be it in writing or out loud. ]
Did it take you long to settle on that name or did you just know?
of course! i know that mobile life well
it's a blessing and a curse
a blurse, if you will
exactly & ty for being the first nat this voicetesty boy gets to memencounter!
aw happy to help voicetest! your bucky is delightful!
yesss good and ty again! your nat’s pretty swell herself
and thank you! <3
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tfln overflow - pursuitspecial
Oh, yeah. That's Smirnoff, of course it's trash.
I kind of get the nail polish remover thing now.
Though Smirnoff has less alcohol content.
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tfln overflow - winterstarpoint
Good thing you're the only person I'd let get away with that.
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tfln overflow - bionicstaringmachine
Because the temptation to hit them with poison darts is too high?
I could replace them with ones that will just make them nap for five minutes.
[Probably she shouldn't encourage this.
Oh well.]
So confident. Especially considering she'll be on the lookout the second she sees a cane in your hands.
[Don't pretend like you're not just going to give him the mead anyway, Natasha.]
you're the best and also LMAO guess we know that varied ridiculousness is happening in the future
Why not thirty? We could get the Spider-Kid to shut up for that long.
[ Half the shit he gives to that kid is a little more put on than anything but sometimes he thinks the kid needs to slow down - he talks too fast for him to understand at times - that a nap might do some good. ]
Knowing her she'll talk about if I'm getting slow in my old age too.
[ Is it confidence if he knows from his interactions with Yelena she'll make a joke about it and he's planning on using that distraction as his strategy in whacking her with the cane?
And he knows she'll give him the mead anyway, but he can humor her by playing along with it. ]
lmao i truly love adding this kind of abject silliness onto the future pile
tfln overflow - imperfectsoldier
Clint says "bonus points for pizza."
See, we were just convinced that the moonshine, arrows, and blindfolds would make it less appealing.
Should've known better.
Re: tfln overflow - imperfectsoldier
And I'll get the pizza, but remind Clint that he is the responsible adult - not me!
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