Natasha Romanoff (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
redintheledger) wrote2013-07-30 03:04 pm
redintheledger) wrote2013-07-30 03:04 pm
Entry tags:
OOM: 2011, Somewhere between Moscow and Sochi
There aren't many times when Natasha wishes she was in a spy movie. Normally, her sense of self-preservation kicks in. She's an attractive red-haired Russian who wears a catsuit: there's no way she'd survive to the end credits.
On the other hand, her travel-time would be reduced to a montage, if that. It'd be the kind of montage with slick, dramatic music; the villain passes through gates with ease, and drinks champagne on the plane. Unfortunately, the price of living in a world where she doesn't get killed by the tuxedo'd hero is that travel by bus is the safest option. No documentation needed, lesser security, cheaper...
Much longer.
No privacy.
It's a full bus, children and students, tourists too cheap to fly, a pair of arguing babushkas...
Natasha had managed to claim one of the seats near the back, but still she can feel the skin behind her shoulder blades crawling as if she were standing in front of a battalion with rifles aimed at her back. When one of the children starts crying an hour into the trip, it's less the sound itself that makes Nat want to shut it up, but the fact that the child's mournful wail is a mask for important sounds. Someone mentioning her on their cell phone, for example. Or someone moving their seat, moving their bag to retrieve something.
Or the safety of a gun being slid off.
The safety of a gun, Nataliya?
Natasha takes a deep breath, forces her eyes shut, and then forces the breath to come out evenly.
No one is going to shoot her on a public bus. Sofia, as far as the evidence indicates, doesn't want her to be killed unless she can watch it and critique Natasha's performance. Rationally, she can't see any of Fjodorov's men putting themselves on a bus to shoot her. Kill her at the station? Yes. But they are hardly going to sit on a bus for up to thirty-two hours for the pleasure of it.
She lets her arm fall down to rest against the window, and the quiet thud as it hits the panelling reminds her that she's still wearing her Widow Bites. The rest of her clothes are perfect civilian – walking boots, shorts, a long-sleeved overshirt to protect her arms from the sun – and her gun is in her backpack, but she has left the Widow Bites on. For all anyone can see, she's just wearing fingerless black gloves, with the shape of some heavy bracelets under her shirt sleeves, but she's still wearing the damn things just because she felt too vulnerable to take the damn things off.
Natasha can remember every scrap of logic that led her to make the calls that landed her here, but it's not, exactly, looking like logic in the stuffy reality of a summer-warmed bus full of travelers when all she wants to do is sleep. But even if she had been calm enough to sleep, the girl in front of her is playing the kind of music that'd make that impossible. It's not the noise-level itself (Natasha can, and has, slept through an aerial bombardment; the still-crying child she could filter out, if she weren't twitchy), but the discordant notes that are trying so desperately hard to be 'edgy'. If her father, a violinist who'd been trained in the time of the Tzars, actually had a grave, he'd be turning in it.
The girl is thirteen, maybe a baby-faced sixteen. From the shared bone structure, she's travelling with her sister, and both the girls are the same age as those Natasha rescued in Sofia, Bulgaria. Now one of those girls has decided to use her freedom to become a killer, using the kind of moves you'd see in a bad action flick. And after fifteen years of obsession, that girl is sending people to test her rescuer to see if she was really worthy of it.
Increasingly, Natasha is fairly certain that she's fucked this up.
The paperwork is going to be awful.
On the other hand, her travel-time would be reduced to a montage, if that. It'd be the kind of montage with slick, dramatic music; the villain passes through gates with ease, and drinks champagne on the plane. Unfortunately, the price of living in a world where she doesn't get killed by the tuxedo'd hero is that travel by bus is the safest option. No documentation needed, lesser security, cheaper...
Much longer.
No privacy.
It's a full bus, children and students, tourists too cheap to fly, a pair of arguing babushkas...
Natasha had managed to claim one of the seats near the back, but still she can feel the skin behind her shoulder blades crawling as if she were standing in front of a battalion with rifles aimed at her back. When one of the children starts crying an hour into the trip, it's less the sound itself that makes Nat want to shut it up, but the fact that the child's mournful wail is a mask for important sounds. Someone mentioning her on their cell phone, for example. Or someone moving their seat, moving their bag to retrieve something.
Or the safety of a gun being slid off.
The safety of a gun, Nataliya?
Natasha takes a deep breath, forces her eyes shut, and then forces the breath to come out evenly.
No one is going to shoot her on a public bus. Sofia, as far as the evidence indicates, doesn't want her to be killed unless she can watch it and critique Natasha's performance. Rationally, she can't see any of Fjodorov's men putting themselves on a bus to shoot her. Kill her at the station? Yes. But they are hardly going to sit on a bus for up to thirty-two hours for the pleasure of it.
She lets her arm fall down to rest against the window, and the quiet thud as it hits the panelling reminds her that she's still wearing her Widow Bites. The rest of her clothes are perfect civilian – walking boots, shorts, a long-sleeved overshirt to protect her arms from the sun – and her gun is in her backpack, but she has left the Widow Bites on. For all anyone can see, she's just wearing fingerless black gloves, with the shape of some heavy bracelets under her shirt sleeves, but she's still wearing the damn things just because she felt too vulnerable to take the damn things off.
Natasha can remember every scrap of logic that led her to make the calls that landed her here, but it's not, exactly, looking like logic in the stuffy reality of a summer-warmed bus full of travelers when all she wants to do is sleep. But even if she had been calm enough to sleep, the girl in front of her is playing the kind of music that'd make that impossible. It's not the noise-level itself (Natasha can, and has, slept through an aerial bombardment; the still-crying child she could filter out, if she weren't twitchy), but the discordant notes that are trying so desperately hard to be 'edgy'. If her father, a violinist who'd been trained in the time of the Tzars, actually had a grave, he'd be turning in it.
The girl is thirteen, maybe a baby-faced sixteen. From the shared bone structure, she's travelling with her sister, and both the girls are the same age as those Natasha rescued in Sofia, Bulgaria. Now one of those girls has decided to use her freedom to become a killer, using the kind of moves you'd see in a bad action flick. And after fifteen years of obsession, that girl is sending people to test her rescuer to see if she was really worthy of it.
Increasingly, Natasha is fairly certain that she's fucked this up.
The paperwork is going to be awful.