ersatzdivinity | Open Musebox Post

Plan for the worst and hope for the best, isn't that how it goes? Neither of them is new or foolish enough to be standing in the doorway as the door swings inward, but that doesn't mean he won't tense when he hears the click, freezing and holding his breath as several sharp, metal projectiles come from the interior of the room outward, and from the door frame downward. There's the faint hum of electricity for roughly twenty seconds after, during which he still doesn't move.

The last thing he wants is a dead left arm this early in the game.

It's debatable to him whether or not this trap is meant to disincline survivors from attempting to re-enter the room, but he is not the point person in this situation. Well that's fun, he thinks. Why can't this be simple like in movies?

Natasha's already well back from the open door, her back to the wall next to the frame as she watches the projectiles embed themselves in the wall across from the door. Her eyes linger there a moment, breath caught in her throat, waiting...waiting for what, she isn't sure, only knows that her ears faintly hum with how hard she's listening for anything. It's a long moment later before her breath finally sighs from her lips, and her eyes meet his on the opposite side of the doorway. She doesn't seem rattled. Only lifts an eyebrow at him, an old sign that's hard to forget, hard to quit. Well? It could be something, or it could be nothing. Another look, the slightest motion of a shoulder. She's going to check. How could she not? After all, anything could be down here.

There's the slightest incline of his chin, nearly imperceptible; he follows her lead, here, so he'll follow her down into this hell he barely remembers. With luck, he'll take most of the physical damage there is to be taken - because there's no fucking way this won't all go pear-shaped at this point, he can feel it in his bones - and the psychological damage can take a damned number, really.

He has other shit to process. Like the fact that his blood is really pumping now.

Carefully he touches the edge of one of the little balls in the floor with his boot; it doesn't budge and he doesn't get electrocuted, so he's taking this as a win.

That's really the sum and substance of sweeping he can do while watching her back, but he does bring the gun up and scan the room, quickly. Nothing whirrs to life, no lights shine in his eyes, so he suspects it's as clear as they're going to get.

He's still with her, still present. That's good. Still looking like a ghost of a memory, one she'd thought she buried forever. Less good. This place is full of enough ghosts for both of them, without adding that to the mix. Her eyes cool, peeling from him and focusing in on the room. There's more to be found in this room. A file abandoned in the rush to clear out, only a few scraps of paper left, but still enough to see. Natasha bends, retrieves it from a narrow gap between desk and filing cabinet, flipping open the covers of the folder and reading the contents. Her lips move, shaping words in silent Russian, before she looks back up, up and past him, through him, and walks quickly towards the door.

"This way."

A breathed command, one she doesn't even really notice is in Russian instead of English. It's what's natural, down here in the depths of the past. She ignores the next three doors, takes them around a bed to the right, another bend to the left. There's no doors for a little while, and then one, finally, alone in the center of the right wall. A door she still remembers very well. A door that leads to nightmares. There's another look at him, before she pushes this door open, showing...showing nothing. A bare room. Rotting mattresses in a heap in the corner. A large, dark stain in the center of the floor. They both know how it got there.

She pauses only a moment, and doesn't look at him this time as she moves forward into the room, towards a small, crumpled shape on the floor in the middle of that great brown stain, heedless of any possible danger--or if not heedless, then willing to take the risk. For whatever that is, in there.

He's with her until the Russian and then...he's still with her, but as the minutes pass and they make their way further into the labyrinth, part of his mind starts to slip sideways. He's hearing voices where he knows there likely are none, echoes she doesn't respond to and therefore cannot be real. Doesn't help that the primary one he hears is hers, interspersed with laughter and the occasional muffled sob of a small girl.

It makes him feel twitchy, on edge.

There are breathing exercises he can do, though, and he goes through them when he remembers to. Tries to count, breathe, count, scan. Continues to watch their backs and hope that the auditory hallucinations don't grow up into visual ones - or things that aren't hallucinated at all.

The door set in the midst of nothing at all gives him visual pause. He shouldn't be here, his bones sing; bad things happen here, so no one is meant to be here now. His eyelid twitches and the plates in his arm tense and shift as he plants himself squarely in the doorway, watching her gravitate towards the old, dried blood on the floor.

"Talia," he mutters before he can help himself, a sharp breath in immediately after. A misstep, maybe, or a lie of history more like than the truth. Right? Can he trust his own mind when he hears a quiet chorus just beyond the wall, just beyond his conscious reckoning? Probably not.

Still. The Widow may have no reason to be his friend, or to trust him beyond watching her back, but this feels too obvious and too ominous. "Take care."

English, apparently, has no room here in the hell of memory.

Her reaction to that name is the silent version of a gasp--muscles tighten across her shoulders and back, the smooth and silent stride of her feet broken for a single step. He shouldn't know that name. She's been Natasha for so long. No more Natalya. And even then...even then no one called her that, except for a man who's long dead. Even if his face is feet behind her, watching as she enters a room they both used to know well. It's only a step, though, and soon she takes another, and her face turns partially away from the shape on the floor, presenting him a profile. "I know what I'm doing." More familiar words, if his mind is still dredging up the past. She's always known exactly what she was doing. Even then. Even that.

But he can't remember. All of that was before they'd perfected their machine, when it was just hypnosis and electric shock and avoidant techniques, when she could still reach inside and find the other man inside him. That man is dead, she reminds herself. This one is someone else. Maybe he's the James Barnes Steve remembers. Maybe he's someone entirely new. Maybe he's just another ghost. The one she knew, the wolf to her spider--he's gone. She crouches, the only sound a shifting of her coat as she reaches down to pick up that shape. An abandoned doll. Once well-loved. She'd had one like it once, back in the faintest depths of memory. By the time she came to this place, it was long gone. One didn't enter this place until the last phases of training. One never met the Soldier until they were ready. She'd been sixteen, the first time, and already a monster. He'd recognized that in her. It was part of why...why she really needs to let this die.

The tell catches him off-guard, how it's...not a hostile response, exactly, to the name, and his breath catches in his throat. Memory is a strange and dangerous thing for most with dark pasts, but when your brain has been chemically and electrically spiced and rebuilt over and over through the decades? He feels like he's drowning in memory suddenly, fighting her in a room like this - perhaps this one - as they were observed from above by the rest, his handlers and her own. The pattern and the sounds of the blows, the corrections, and the repetitions. His eyes go up towards the observation windows, but they've been sealed over and replaced with...

Vents?

He frowns at them, as a drop of condensation falls from one grate but doesn't manage to hit the ground; it dissipates into the air that doesn't seem any thicker than before, and yet. He moves to take a step inside and that's when he hears the double trigger of pressure plates, probably one in the doorway and one under the doll, as more liquid gathers on the grates above their heads. He freezes, reaches out an arm towards her. "We have to go."

I know what I'm doing, she'd said. They were outside, and it was snowing, her hand on his cheek, the other on his metal wrist, and she'd kissed him. She'd kissed him and he'd kissed her back, like someone starving for it. He feels the same desire now, hot under his collar, inappropriate yet not unwelcome, just...bad timing. 'Same as before' a voice mocks him in Russian. There was always bad timing. They were always moments from death.

"Please."

It was a long time ago, when they'd danced in this room. And make no mistake; it is a dance, as much as any other kind, just as intimate and just as final. They'd never gotten a chance to dance together any other way. She'd teased him about that, once; once, in lighter days, before they'd killed every trace of the man he used to be. He'd promised her a dance. She'd promised to teach him. And then, and then. She should have known better, but she was young and stupid. And he was...well. She knew instantly just what it was that had brought James Barnes and Steve Rogers together. What bound them. There's a certain optimism that goes to the bone, that clings no matter how much one tries to rip it free.

But she is no longer young and stupid, hasn't been in a very long time, which is why the second he steps through that door she freezes utterly, eyes glancing up and around. Explosives, or--no. Of course. Easier to keep the facility this way. She wants to be sharp, to tell him she's taken the lead on this, that he doesn't give her orders, but it would be petty, and they might need the breath, and that please--that please claws at her in a way she does not like. This has been a terrible idea, one she blames on the place as much as the person.

And so she doesn't say any of that, just snaps to her feet with one fluid motion, tossing the doll to the side and moving towards him and his outstretched arm. The doorway is narrow, forces her close to him, but she doesn't shy away. In the hallway, she only pauses for a moment, eyes seeking and finding small vents high along the wall spaced cleverly and disguised. An eloquent curse falls from her lips as she picks up her pace into a run, gun back in front of her in both hands.

"Run," she orders, no longer concerned about the sound. "The entire compound has been compromised." They can't stay. Whatever might be waiting down here will have to stay hidden, and whatever is waiting upstairs, they'll just have to face themselves.

He doesn't need to be told twice, picking up speed behind her even when his nerves are screaming for him to stay in front. There's bound to be something, someone to deal with in the upper levels of the complex; none of these things happen in a vacuum. But he knows that she would not see it as him trying to shield her from bullets he will heal from and she probably won't, so he stays behind.

Several of the doors on their way up have sealed themselves shut and here is where the arm becomes directly useful; he punches through locking mechanisms and hinges, tearing the doors off and open. The air is getting thicker by degrees as they go and he wonders, in the back of his mind, what else he could have possibly expected. More memories assail him; her laughter in his ear, her skin beneath his teeth, his tongue, and if it weren't for their footsteps echoed and doubled and quadrupled he might get lost in it once more.

The Soldier, though a distant aspect of himself, still exists and so as they round a corner to automatic gunfire it kicks over, pushing his hypervigilence out of his head and into the environment. Whomever the gunmen were expecting it may not have been the metal-armed ghost of decades past. He closes in on the nearest gunman, using a knife instead of wasting bullets in close combat.

His blood sings. As much as he's recoiled against violence in his scant few weeks alone, that recoil has never applied to Nazis, Hydra, or people trying to kill or capture him. He feels more than sees the Widow spinning into action at his side and...

It's bloody and brutal and perfect.

He thinks he may have loved her.

He's right, about that; she doesn't need his protection, is more than capable of knowing how to handle herself in live fire, how to avoid being shot. There are many reasons why she is still alive, at least for the moment. But being proud and being too stubborn to realize when he is a useful tool have never been the same thing, for her. She doesn't argue as he moves forward when when encounter closed doors, lets him take the approach without arguing. She knows as well as he does what's waiting at the top.

The sound of gunfire flips a switch in her mind not entirely unlike his own. It's easier to just exist in this state, to act without waiting to react, a creature of instinct and vicious survival. She hears the sound of a knife meeting armor, meeting flesh, gets two shots off from her handgun before it becomes useless, a thing discarded in favor of the batons she pulls from the belt at her waist, extending them with a flick of her wrists and spinning into action. Some dances you never forget. Some dances are in the blood, in the bone, and some memories...ah, some memories are still sweet, no matter how bitter the remembering. They still move like they're two halves of a whole, the Widow and the Soldier. She doesn't have to watch him to see the choreography. She can feel it, a bloody pas de deux conducted in silence, broken only by the sounds on gunfire and breaking bone, the soft sounds of weak flesh giving way. She takes a blow, two, but always recovers. They divide the room and take them all. Whoever sent these men, they never had a chance.

They move in an arc throughout the room and adjacent hall, until there are no more of the armed men standing. Breathing. Living. He can't bring himself to feel the least bit sad about it, either. Any of them easily would have been happy to put a bullet in his brain or claim the death of the Black Widow as their own accomplishment.

Nothing of value was lost.

A movement in the corner of his eye has him whirling on her, left arm up and meeting with one of her batons as the vibration travels up his arm to his shoulder. The riposte is automatic - the exchange is less than twenty blows, all told, but he knows each one by heart, has had this exact same fight with her. His heart is racing and he laughs, suddenly, as they both whirl to a stop, his heart full of joy and his body full of wanting in a way that hasn't been reachable, achievable before this moment.

The last time they did this, the last time they fought...the last time they fought he tried to kill her, and the time before that, and the time before that. But the last time they danced, with enemies at their feet, twitching and dying, the last time they danced like this she kissed him after and he finds himself hoping, hoping...

"Dor," he says quietly, watching her face, her lips even as his brain slides from Russian to Romanian. She is the source of that longing, isn't she? Has she grown out of it, grown past him, or does she miss this thing she can recall in the whole where he only has fragments to piece together into unfinished images without a clear beginning and a darkened end?

Saying 'please' again seems unfair, a knife where he didn't know he'd wielded one. They should leave, but. But. "You kissed me in the snow."

Edited 2017-12-21 07:11 (UTC)

She doesn't mean to attack him. It was just a natural progression of things. Eliminate one target, move on to the next, whirling and ducking and delivering blow after blow. None of these supposed soldiers so far have been able to block more than two of her strikes at most. She's an efficient killer, always has been, thinking three or four or seven steps ahead. But they've been at this for long enough that she sinks into that haze where there's nothing but the fight and the pounding of her heart. The target goes down, and she turns to the next one, but the next one blocks, and blocks again and counters and moves in a way she knows. She knows this dance, and it continues in vicious silence interrupted only by the sound of one of her batons clattering to the ground, knocked from her grasp, broken only by the sound--

The sound of laughter. Laughter, warm and surprised and more alive than anything around them, laughter that travels from her ears straight to her heart, stopping it. His hand, that deadly metal grip is closed around the delicate bones of her wrist, and she is frozen as he looks at her in a way that he's not supposed to, anymore. Beautiful eyes, she thinks, she's always thought, those beautiful eyes moving across her face, always coming back to rest on her lips. Her own clear, the haze of battle fading. There's confusion in those eyes, anger, a spark of longing just as strong as his own.

Her Romanian is a little rustier, but the meaning of the word comes easily enough.

"The man I kissed is dead," she says, and her voice should be sharper, and not this low, husky whisper. "They murdered him. Tore him apart and buried the pieces. You aren't supposed to be here. You weren't supposed to be here--"

And yet she isn't pulling away. And yet she's still close, so close to him. And her eyes keep moving from his lips to his eyes, searching. For what, even she isn't sure anymore.

"They tried," he admits, and they were almost successful. Almost. What he suspects is that since Zola happened first, everything after that is a part of who he is, a composite of these unfeeling monsters and men drowning in what feelings he could still grasp onto. They're broken, rough-edged and constantly injuring each other and his whole by rote. They shift, like patterns of leaves in the midday sun back in Brooklyn, but each is no less of him. Here he runs into an intersection - Bucky's affection for redheads, the Soldier's affection for this one, in particular, his current desire to be, feel, real again.

What is more real than wanting someone right in front of you?

"I've dreamed of you." He refuses to be ashamed of that. "I would never have chosen to forget." The hand on her wrist caresses her pulse point idly. It's not an attempt at seduction; he doubts he's capable. But the energy, the electricity it takes the heart to pump feels different under the fingers of his metal arm. "The man you kissed died, and was reborn." Into a confused fool, he thinks, and smiles a little wryly. "But he would like to kiss you again."

He would never have chosen to forget, he says, and again those are words that are sharp, cutting without him even knowing. He would never have chosen. But she had chosen to let him, hadn't she? Chosen to let him forget her. Chosen to not try and remind him. Because even then, she'd known she wasn't going to stay in that Russia, working for the dying arm of a body of government that didn't realize the deathblow had already been received. There was no coming back. And she wasn't going to die with it, so if she just let him forget...it would hurt him less, killing her. It wouldn't hurt him at all, if he didn't remember, because there was no way they wouldn't send the Soldier after the Widow. She's always been practical to the point of ruthlessness. Necessary decisions are often painful. But never has one lingered so much like an open wound.

She shakes her head at his words, but it isn't a no, just an expression of frustration. A way to clear a head that should be clearer than it is. "I'm not that woman anymore," she says to him, and the switch back to English is deliberate even as her voice stays soft. "I'm not Natalya, I'm not that Widow, even if I'm still the Black Widow. You don't know me." And he had, once, she realizes, she remembers. He'd known her better than any of them. Not just physically. He'd understood in a way no one else did what all the different pieces of her became together. But it's been so many years. So many bodies. How can he want to--even if he remembers, even if she remembers everything (she'd never forgotten) how can they both forget the time and the distance in between? But it's still not a no, and her free hand has found its way to his chest, fingers flexing as her palm flattens and finds a heart racing almost as fast as her own.

"Neither of us are the same as we were then." He isn't sure how to explain the rest, how it's easier to let the passage of time be just that when time itself has been a friend, enemy, nothingness. Everyone he grew up with, save one man, has been dead for decades. Here he is, frozen in time. The future is here, and the past haunts him anyway. How does he explain that no two people should remain the same just as they started out, be they civilians or otherwise? "I know who you were, once. You know who I was, once. Is that really so terrible?"

He would not blame her, for letting him forget. He was in no position to decide to leave with her.

More importantly, she survived.

"I would like to know you," he says quietly, and now is bad timing, now is the worst idea, but he feels alive for once, and vaguely unafraid of the future. Time to capitalize on that feeling, the blood in his veins, her hand on his chest.

Is that really so terrible, he asks, and she almost laughs. Is it? It is, if you ask most people. The things she's done, the things he's done. What they've done, both together and apart. And still he says I would like to know you. He doesn't know what he's asking. He can't. He doesn't remember. Not enough.

But for all that she's a calculated person, always thinking, always planning, she's reckless, too. She's always taken risks, counting on her own skills, her own certainty to help her make it back out. She wants to be angry, she wants to be upset, she wants one of these faceless men around them to still be alive, so she can have something to make her pull away, something else to spend all this adrenaline on. Because right now, she isn't sure what she wants to do more, hit him or kiss him. Her hand slides up his chest, fingers at the base of his throat, touching the pulse there, hand sliding higher still to brush through tangled hair.

"Knowing is dangerous," she says, and she's closer still, almost close enough to kiss. "Knowing me could kill you," she says, and her lips are brushing his. It's not quite a kiss, not yet. He should know what choice he's making.

"I could kill you."

He wonders which end of the equation she finds so impossible if it's even an aspect he's considered. Doubtful. He's working on limited knowledge and a great deal of questionable instinct in the moment. but her comment brings him to a question of his own: does he want to die.

Not right now, is the answer that comes to mind first, so it's the one he goes along with. The WIdow could kill him, yes. He knows that. He trusts in that. It makes her a much safer option than literally anyone he knows, because while Steve is physically capable he is not emotionally. He could bet money on it.

His pulse ramps a little as her fingers glide across his skin, into his hair. He breathes, long and slow, trying to clear his head but it really just means that he breathes more of her in. "I know," is his answer. What else can he say to that?

I know, he says, and what else is left to say? He's made his choice, and so has she. Maybe if she does this, she'll be able to regain perspective, clear her head and his of all the ghosts still haunting them. It's a thin excuse. She shouldn't need an excuse. She makes her choices and doesn't look back.

The words are barely out of his mouth before she rises just that tiniest bit higher on her toes and kisses him, heedless of the death and destruction around them. That doesn't matter. Bodies are just that, dead and gone and of no concern when he is warm and alive and right here in front of her. The adrenaline rush spikes again, and her lips move on his, parting to taste him. It isn't at all like it once was, but that's for the best. She doesn't want what used to be. She wants to know him, too.

His brain does an odd thing when she kisses him and goes quiet. Minimal chatter, a consideration for the gas that may still be rising through the building's subterranean floors towards them, an awareness of the hall itself but the rest? The awareness of his arm, all his various aches, and pains, concerns about the invisible minefield called his memory, fades to a murmur in the back of his mind.

So that's...interesting.

Opening his mouth to more of her is easy. Keeping his hands loose against her waist, breathing her in. She smells so similar yet different, changed over time and circumstance or perhaps because his memory is just worn thin in strange places and he wonders how much is different for her. Wonders, discards it. Wonders instead at the way she tastes, her lips against his own.

Wonders at how he woke up this morning with no idea he'd kiss anyone today. If someone had told him, he would have laughed in their faces.

Eventually one of them will need air, and he'll give her a small, lopsided smile. "I'll follow your lead." The hell out of here, at least.

Somewhere along the way, he let go of her wrist. Somewhere along the way, both of her hands ended up on his shoulders, in his hair, fingertips on skin and her body not quite pressed against his, just barely brushing. It's a long moment, an endless moment, although it has to end eventually. Eventually, it stops, although her mind still floats in that strangely calm silence, distantly cataloguing sensations. He tastes different. Feels different. But that could be her as much as him, couldn't it, and their bodies still fit together in a way that makes her wonder if they still fit together other ways. Considerations for another time, maybe, or for never. Or for now, because there might not be another time. Never a good time, she thinks absently, tongue briefly touching her lips, tasting him as her eyes slowly open. She doesn't want to move. She should move. They both have to.

"We should go. That gas won't stay downstairs forever." There's a town a few kilometers away, too far to walk for most people, but not for everyone. The dead men at their feet probably brought their own transportation. She'd hidden a bike in a small stand of scrub not too far away. "How did you get here?" She still doesn't pull away. That's probably not immediately necessary. A secondary concern. When they have a plan, then--then this can stop.

"Walked." He glances at said dead men. They could take one of their vehicles, but it's likely being tracked so it wouldn't really be worth it. Might be fun to dump it somewhere interesting, though; he'll consider it once they're clear of any possible death via poisonous gases.

Other things his mind would seriously like him to consider now versus later: the idea that she may be pretending. The idea that he may be hallucinating, dreaming, or dying. The idea that she is going to kick him to the curb the moment he becomes a liability, which, fair really.

The idea that he is going to disappoint her wholly by not measuring up to what he can only partially remember.

"How did you get here?"

"Bike's parked out back." More or less. A short hike, one they've both made before. She can see the hesitation in his face, uncertainty that's not exactly like it used to be, but enough so that she can't quite help the automatic response that still comes to mind. "I can give you a lift back to town. Or wherever." He could come with her. It's better, a time like this. They'd probably tripped some new security system that hadn't been in place the last time they were there. Hadn't known who was there. Next time, they'll be more prepared for their best weapons coming back to haunt them.

Stepping away and holstering her weapons, she checks the bodies quickly for any sort of personal belongings. Nothing. They're professional, at least.Finally, she stands again. "You coming or what? Maybe you'd rather stay with them?" A gesture towards the bodies on the floor as she looks at him, and the curiosity in her eyes is gone for the moment, replaced by practicality and the priority of living.

If he agrees, she'll lead the way out to her bike. There's only one helmet. She doesn't offer it to him, but then, he probably wouldn't accept it. It's about a twenty-minute ride back to town if you take the direct route, twice that if you cut cross country and confuse your trail enough to approach the city from the opposite side. They do the latter, of course, and at the very end of the ride she pulls up to a run-down apartment building, idling the bike at the corner. "This is me." For now, for the moment, for the hour. She's not sure yet. Things could change. "You want the bike? To get back to wherever you're staying." He has to have some place, right? Some plan. He always had a plan.

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