OOM: Khabarovsk, Siberia, USSR, 1955

[redintheledger]

Outside the KGB field office in Khabarovsk, the September weather is turning towards winter with a vengeance. Inside, well. Given it's after six on a Saturday, Natasha doesn't quite care what the temperature is doing. The oven's heat will last until she feels up to go back to her apartment. But Izmaylov is back from China, and had stomped around pointedly until she let him fire up the oven.

(He'd wanted her to do it; she had stared at him coolly, taping a letter-opener casually against her fingers until the agent backed off.)

Mostly, the office is nearly silent. Izmaylov is typing up a report at the other end, Natasha is sorting through (and fixing) the filing system, and occasionally Chigrakov the guard pokes his head in from the foyer.

It's much, much better than being in her apartment.

Comments

[nerves_of_ice]

He squeezes her fingers, and then simply holds on.

"I didn't know. I swear it, Natasha, I swear to you I didn't realize. I'm sorry."

He makes himself take a deep breath, trying to get control. It's harder than he'd thought.

"... looks like we've got a lot to catch up on."

[redintheledger]

"We do," she says softly, voice mostly even. She suspects that, maybe, she should pull away. But it's been so long since anyone's held her hand, so long since someone's touched her without it being a claustrophobic hug of socially obliged sympathy, that she doesn't.

"If...if I don't take up your offer. Do you think this time could you write, sometimes?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Of course. I'll even dare that train trip again to visit."

A slight smile appears.

"Don't think that means I won't try to convince you to come back with me, though. But if you don't want to, I'll understand."

[redintheledger]

Something eases around her ribs, which makes her smile at him, just a little.

(It also makes her want to cry, but she shoves that down.)

"Of course. Thank you.




Although, you do realize you're going to have to actually tell me what you want me for?" Her tone is wry, but more teasing than frustrated.

[nerves_of_ice]

"That's true."

The small smile is still playing at the corners of his mouth, but the look in his eyes is serious.

"How much did you know about what I do - when I'm not training precocious red-haired students, that is?"

[redintheledger]

"Oh, I'm precocious?"

She tugs her hand free, but starts them walking again. It's safer to have this conversation on the move.

"Are you asking what I was told, or what I surmised?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Aren't you?"

He falls in step beside her, and tucks his hands in the pockets of his coat.

"I'm asking what you know."

[redintheledger]

"Then I know nothing. I was told you were a teacher, nothing more. The rest is speculation based on what you taught me, and they taught us. It leads to similar places."

She glances at him.

"We were being trained as spies. You taught me how to sound American, but you also refined how I fought. So based on that, the kind of spy who also steals, and kills.

How am I doing?"

[nerves_of_ice]

This time, his smile is warm and approving.

"I told you that you were precocious."

He takes another couple of steps before adding,

"I'm not much of a thief, though. It's not my specialty."

[redintheledger]

"Mmhmm."

Are you asking me back to Moscow just to kill people, Alex?

"So, what is your specialty?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"I'm a weapon. An assassin, if you want."

He's looking straight ahead of them, not at her, almost as if he doesn't want to see her reaction.

"I'm very good at what I do, Natasha."

[redintheledger]

Whatever reaction she has, it's limited to the slight arching of an eyebrow - hardly something easy to see under the streetlights.

"I believe it," she says, simply, and leaves it at that. Her silence is back, deep and inviting.

Tell me what you're after.

[nerves_of_ice]

Now he does glance sideways at her, looking for hints of her thoughts in her expression.

"Thanks."

A beat.

"That's not what I'd need a partner for, though. I also collect intelligence, when it's needed. That's ... more complicated, for anything that goes beyond a simple in-and-out mission."

[redintheledger]

Unfortunately for him, she'd been perfecting the art of hiding her thoughts long before she tried to brain him with a copy of Sherlock Holmes.

Natasha looks a tad amused. "So you are a thief...or you require the services of one. Is that what you want me for?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He snorts.

"No, like I said before, I'm not much of a thief. But I am a spy. And I think, I still think, that you could be a good one, too."

"I don't want your services, Natasha. I want a partner. I want you."

[redintheledger]

At his vehemence, she looks a little startled. The surprise runs much, much deeper than her expression suggests.

It's been a long time since anyone actually respected her, and what she could do. Her husband adored her, but he didn't count, not in this sense - he flew planes, he didn't translate or know how to shift his accent. He had thought her brilliant, but her superiors have had her filing more often than not.

She could leave. Leave and go back to...

(Please, how do I turn them off? Comrade Doctor, please. Help.)

"Who would I be reporting? In Moscow?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"As a team, we'd be reporting to our handlers. Sometimes in Moscow, sometimes in the field."

He slows his steps as they approach the lights of what must be the restaurant, which is still a little ways off yet.

"Reports go up the chain from there, the same as before. Procedure, you know."

[redintheledger]

"Procedure," she echoes, a slightly cynical note in her voice.

"Did they tell you why their little academy was shut down? Because, I don't want..." She starts again.

"Did they tell you what I had to do, before everyone was assigned elsewhere?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"... no," he says, very quietly. "No. They didn't."

"Will you?"

[redintheledger]

Natasha nods.

"I had to kill Kaminskaya," she says, and looks at his face. "Dear Comrade Doctor K had fucked up, and Kaminskaysa, and Zharkova became...very paranoid, heightened aggression. They turned on us. On everyone. And they were...altered, physically, more then we are already. Kaminskaya killed Bogolomova, I moved in. It nearly killed me. But," she stops, shakes her head. "That's not the point.

Do you understand my point? I do not want to go back if those kinds of things are going to still happen."

[nerves_of_ice]

"I'm sorry," he murmurs, and falls silent for what feels like a very, very long time.




"I can't promise they won't." He shrugs his left shoulder; deliberately awkward in a way that's intended to draw her eye.

"All I can say is that ... "

A pause, a breath, and then --

" ... I hate the experiments, too."

[redintheledger]

Her eyes do flick towards his shoulder, and the corner of her mouth lifts a little.

"Well, it's something," she says, honestly. And then, voice pitched a little smoother with amusement, "You might want to work on your recruiting speech, a little.

So, tell me. Why should I go back?"

[nerves_of_ice]

Temper flashes in his glance, just for an instant, before he buries it.

"If I were a recruiter, I'd just lie."


"Why go back? Because they won't leave you alone, Natasha. You're too good for that. You know it, too."

This time his shrug is impatient.

"Why not come back -- on your terms? Do what you want, as much as any of us can?"

[redintheledger]

And there goes that choice he promised.

She keeps the thought to herself, mostly because she's aware - had been aware since he knocked on the door - that the most they could have done was buy her some time.

Not that she says anything. She just snorts, bites the inside of her cheek, and keeps walking.

Finally, she says, "Do you know how Bruskin recruited me? Initially? He was a commissar during the Siege of Stalingrad, and he'd heard what I'd been getting up to. So, he found me, and he said, 'bring me five Nazi dogtags, and you can have this chocolate bar'. I was fourteen, and starving, but even then I thought that it was a bad idea. NKVD, taking an interest in you?" She shakes her head.

"It's funny what a bar of chocolate gets you. But, you know what," she adds in an abrupt change of tone, voice coming faster. "If you're taking me back, then the least you can do is buy me a decent meal."

[nerves_of_ice]

Something complex passes over his face.

"I won't be the one to take you anywhere you don't want to go, Natasha."

He smiles, a little bit.

"But I'll buy you a meal either way."