fallaces sunt rerum species

OOM

2015-08-09T04:58:29Z

Agent Natasha Romanoff is aware of processes and regulations. Agent Clint Barton was compromised, badly, leading to multiple deaths and a massive security breach: he needs to be assessed.

Natasha, daughter of the USSR and formerly of the KGB, doesn't like it.

Actually, she hates it.

--

She doesn't react well when Clint tells her where he's going (World Security Council, who tried to nuke New York, who are shadowy and tried to nuke New York, responsible for overseeing Clint's assessment and isn't that a nice word for saying so many other things, and it's Clint, it's Clint, it's Clint-). But she gets a grip.

After a little bit.

--

She insists on driving him. And picking him up. It's not really according to regulations, but SHIELD knows how to handle her. They okay it.

So does Clint.

--

They are quiet during the drive. Clint's withdrawn into himself, and she doesn't want to disturb that. It's also easier to keep control of her own emotions. She's still not okay with this, she so very nearly lost him, but she's a professional.

"Okay," Natasha says, pulling up. "Here we are."

She pulls the keys from the ignition and looks over at the passenger seat, where Clint hasn't yet reached for the door-handle.

"Hey," she says, and he glances over. "Don't be late, okay? I'll coming looking."

There's a pause as he processes that that. Not a long one, but she's not sure she likes it anyway. It could just be mental distance, or it could be he wasn't expecting to come out. Or just that he's focused on the present, Romanoff, she tells herself, firmly.

"Yeah, okay," Clint says, and she smiles at him.

"Nat," he says then, and reaches out for her. First her hand, which he brings up to kiss, and then he moves in to kiss her mouth. Not sweet or soft, but not hard or desperate either. Just a firm kiss that she leans into.

"Don't be late," Natasha repeats, and she gets a faint smile.

--

She doesn't linger outside the building, but she does stay there three and a half minutes after he walks into the foyer.

Just...

Just in case he decides to say 'fuck it' and leaves. Just in case it's a trap and he sees it.

But he doesn't come out, and so Agent Natasha Romanoff lets out a breath, twists the keys in the ignition, and drives away.

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OOM: Molly, Post-Cells

2015-01-05T22:19:35Z

[placeholder, placeholder, placeholder post

place a hold, if you can]

[A.K.A. sometime after flopping at Clint and getting her bearings - maybe a day or so later - Natasha walks down into the bar to find MOLLY. And talk. WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.]

[(nat's fixed her hair. it's all pretty again now. this is important, clearly)]

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Molly

2014-10-06T11:40:47Z

Natasha is not kicking leaves.

Nope.

There are no autumn leave piles that are being kicked by any kind of stompy boot. Certainly not the kind of steel-tipped stompy boots that see action or a risk of falling planks of wood. Maybe the latter. Certainly not the former.

And she's certainly not having fun.

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OOM: Milliways, Firing Range

2014-08-03T00:21:20Z

The Milliways gun range is very, very useful.

So are placeholder posts!

One Natasha, wearing casual clothes (complete with a silly t-shirt, because this is who Natasha is), hair braided out of the way, at the firing range with her Glocks.

Yay practice.

Except she's finishing up now, so should anyone really want to talk to her...

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OOM: Paris, December 1955

2014-03-23T04:03:48Z

She takes the long way home.

Nancy, as she'd confessed to Amanda, had once had a boyfriend. A beautiful boy called Nicholas, who'd been drafted to the war and had written her letters, and had died there. A boyfriend is not a husband, but Nancy had offered her grief as an understanding to...

Well.

To her target.

And Amanda - shaken, stricken, ever crying - keeps buying it. And why shouldn't she?

Nikolai had been a beautiful boy from the Urals. A no-good boy, her mama would have said, but by then her mama had been dead for two years and besides, even then, Natasha knew that Kolya wasn't the kind of boy who stuck around. But still she'd cried, a little, when he died.

With Lyosha, she couldn't even speak for two days. And she'd used that just as much as the memory of the bright-eyed Kolya. More, really, to understand and then manipulate the grief of another widow.

She doesn't give a damn about Amanda. Or the memory of Kolya. It was necessary for the mission. But Lyosha...

Natasha adjusts her scarf, and keeps walking. Alex would be back at their apartment by now, and so the best way for her to be alone is to stay in the streets just a little bit longer.

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OOM: Paris, New Year's Eve, 1955

2014-03-15T01:31:24Z

She had, three days earlier, insisted that she'd take Alex dancing. It's a frivolous wish. They are busy with controlling and taking advantage of the fallout from Quentin's death, and while she thinks they are doing well, it's no time to stop working.

Except...

It's New Year's Eve. Both of them are increasingly tired and while they could use the parties for politicking, equally they could run the risk of being caught. It would not be out of character for James and Nancy to take the time to themselves like the devoted pair they are.

And what better time to finally get Alex to dance than New Year's? Get dressed in something nice and warm, head over to the big street party at Avenue des Champs-Élysées...

Not that she's going to tell him that. There's an element of surprise she's looking forward to. But while she's not going to tell him the details, it'd be the right thing to see how he'd like the idea, and if she should use one of her plans for a smaller celebration instead.

She waits until they are doing the clean-up from lunch (she washes, he dries), and then, with more artful innocence than she'd ever do for a real assignment, asks,

"What are your feelings on large crowds?"

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OOM: back to Moscow

2014-02-10T09:35:25Z

( It's a long journey back to Moscow )

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OOM: Chicago, June, 2011

2014-01-09T23:08:19Z

From: Maria Hill <[ADDRESS REDACTED]>
Date: Tuesday, June 27th, at 16:39
Subject: Because I care.

Arching her eyebrow, Natasha opens the email, and clicks on the link.

It takes fifty-four seconds for her to snort with amusement.

By the end of the song, she has her face in her hands, giggling hysterically at her desk.

(And a few minutes later, her phone has a new ringtone.)

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OOM: Paris, December 1955

2013-12-10T05:42:24Z

It just turns December by the time they get to Paris; the city is appropriately cold. Beautiful, different, Paris...and cold. As is the small apartment that James and Nancy Rushman are renting from a countess fallen on modern times, and Natasha bites back any complaints she might have over the heating because Nancy never grew up with ovens.

(And yet, the point remains: she was warmer in Siberia.)

Natasha sits at the dressing table, carefully shading her eyelids. The make-up case is new, but she'd done her best to add some scratches and dents to it, so it'd actually look like it belonged to a woman who travelled. She'd done the same with the new wedding ring on her left hand, so it'd look like Nancy and James hadn't been married for less then five minutes. Of course, details like that wouldn't be worth a damn if no one reads them as being an item in the first place. Not for a married couple who are happy and stable, which is needed here. And which Alex has so far...somewhat failed at this aspect of James's life.

She sighs, and then carefully finishes applying her make-up. They have some time before they are due to go out, and she needs to talk to Alex. She slips on her coat, and then walks out into the living room.

"James?"

She thinks he'll listen.

Hopefully he'll listen.

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OOM; Milliways inlet

2013-12-07T10:05:35Z

Milliways is a very, very strange place. It should be expected for what it is, but she's still surprised.

An equatorial inlet. Okay. Okay.

Why not?

The only people to be surprised to find her in the shade of some trees at the inlet, jeans rolled up to her knee and sitting on the jacket Bar provided, reading a book, are people who do not actually know her.

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Note to Fury, left with the Bar

2013-12-06T06:43:35Z

Boss,

There is a Doc/Agent Simmons (5) from work who has arrived here. She's wondering if she can disclose information about the bar to Agent Leo Fitz, her partner. ~~Given levels of co-depedence demonstra~~Best to address answer to her.

~ H

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Milliways

2013-11-19T10:14:16Z

Natasha is eighty-three. Old enough to be a grandmother. Old enough to be a great-grandmother, had the mother part had happened at all. Old enough, apparently, to acquire a certain degree of wisdom.

What she is doing at the moment isn't very wise.

She's sitting at the bar in Milliways, studying the bottles stacked up on the shelves. There is some logic: Milliways appeared in her apartment just when she was thinking that she'd really, really love to stop thinking, and it's a bar.

A bar at the end of the universe, where people from all times (like Nataliya Shostakova from 1952, whispers the annoyingly persistent part of her mind that won't let her forget it), so maybe they'd have something that'd get her drunk more easily than vodka.

Unfortunately for Natasha's drive for experimentation, another part of her is pointing out that getting drunk in a strange bar when she is freaked out over her memory is stupid.

But Natasha is eighty-three, and she's very, very tired of being careful when all she wants to do is not think for a few hours.

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OOM: Khabarovsk, Siberia, USSR, March 1955

2013-11-12T10:08:31Z

( What's happened to my husband? )

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OOM: Khabarovsk, Siberia, USSR, March 1953

2013-11-10T22:46:44Z

She kisses her husband when he walks through the door to their apartment. This is not an unusual occurrence for the Shostakovs, but instead of her normal light greeting, she's far more thorough.

"Nata," Lyosha says, finally, "is everything...alright?" Unlike her, he's never dropped his Volga accent, and he just sounds like home.

"I can't kiss my own husband in our own living room?"

"Nata."

Natasha looks up at him, studying his face. For a moment, she entertains the thought of explaining things to him.

I spent a week being nine, and tried to start a socialist revolution, and then there was a zombie outbreak where I could have died, and currently I'm hiding a gun from I think the future behind some books, and I never did tell you about Milliways, did I?

Maybe not.

"I had a long day," she says simply. "And I missed you."

His expression turns complicated; he doesn't quite believe her, but there are some things you just don't ask about when your wife is a lieutenant in the NKVD. And, still, she can read in his face how much I missed you means, even after five years of marriage.

I missed you, I love you, I love you.

This time, he kisses her. And if they end up having dinner later than normal, well.

These things happen.

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OOM: Khabarovsk, Siberia, USSR, 1955

2013-10-26T09:38:40Z

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.

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OOM: 2011, San Diego

2013-10-11T04:33:13Z

Saturday is a day that Natasha is determined to spend being lazy. She and Clint had gone to SeaWorld (and patched things up) the day before, and although she decided to try sleeping in a bed last night instead of on the couch, her insomnia didn't miraculously vanish.

She managed to have a lazy morning, at least. By her standards. But her personal revelation is an itch at the back of her mind, and it feels dishonest not to tell him. There are risks to saying anything, but then again, there always are. Despite her track record, she's rarely let that stop her.

About the time she hits half an hour spent scrolling through I Can Has Cheese Burger, she can acknowledge that she's procrastinating about it. Looking at LOLcats is an entertaining way to procrastinate, but procrastination it is.

It's not that Natasha can't think of ways to bring the subject up. Although she doesn't spend as much time seducing as people think, she can still think of half a dozen ways of saying 'I love you'. It's that...

This is Clint. And she's fairly certain that all she's doing is playing catch-up, which never gives anyone confidence for negotiating relationships.

She's also fairly certain that she's been glancing over at him a bit too often to play it cool, but these things happen.

"Hey, Clint?"

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OOM: Moscow, USSR, January 1948

2013-10-09T11:23:21Z

( Aftermath )

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OOM: Moscow, USSR, January 1948

2013-10-09T11:11:37Z

( How do I turn these on? )

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OOM: 2011, Helicarrier

2013-09-10T09:40:56Z

After talking with Fury, she works on her after-action report, and drinks just a few too many cups of coffee.

The result is, by the time she should grab something to eat again, she's far too wired to try and deal with the cafeteria and the number of fellow agents, analysts, and crew that would be there. She grabs some Doritos from the vending machine, and retreats to her assigned room.

It's possibly not the best frame of mind in which to call Clint, but...

She misses him. And needs to let him know where she is. She'd told Fury she'd be in San Diego for a week, but in the resulting hours, she's come to the conclusion that she really should ask.

Pulling out her phone, she presses his name in her contact list, and waits.

Please don't be in a late meeting.

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OOM: Milliways; Firing Range

2013-09-02T10:38:40Z

Annoying things about having a husband in the military - sometimes, the military takes him off for exercises and training for days on end. It's not as if Natasha has a lot to do to freaking Khabarovsk, and she'd had plans for Alexei.

But in the absence of one ridiculously attractive husband, a lack of clothes to repair, and entirely unable to bring herself to reread any of the books they'd brought with them, she's taken herself off to Milliways. Not that it's going to pass the time, but at least she could do things to wear herself out enough that a nap wouldn't completely throw off her sleeping-cycle, and that will fill in the time.

So - dressed in trousers and with a scarf pinned over her hair - she's at the firing range with a rifle, practicing her marksmanship.

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OOM: 2011, Chicago, Girls Night

2013-09-01T03:31:19Z

Natasha is, for the record, perfectly ready to go out. A vintage red patterned sundress, light make-up, a pair of red and silver octopus earrings dangling from her ears, and a nicely solid-yet-stylish pair of sandals waiting beside the door (thank you, John Fluevog).

She's perfectly ready, but for the time being, she's going to curl up on her couch with her laptop, and argue with people on the internet about the subtleties of Latin grammar.

(It's nice to care about things that don't actually involve world security, and that's her defense, and she's sticking to it.)

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OOM: 2011, Helicarrier

2013-09-01T01:38:38Z

It's good to be back on the Helicarrier.

Even if - once she's showered, changed into comfortable civilian clothing, grabbed something to eat - there is a massive amount of paperwork to get started on. She'd started drafting her after-action reporty in her head on the flight over, but she wasn't looking forward to writing the real thing.

Then again, she was pretty sure no one enjoyed writing those things, no matter what had happened.

But before she can start, there is one person she needs to talk to.

"Sir."

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OOM: 2011, Sochi Harbour

2013-08-07T10:02:23Z

( Watch your back, agent )

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OOM: Vladivostock

2013-08-05T00:50:52Z

The downside to trackers, and waiting for the people who unknowingly have them to actually move, is that it leaves time to think. And middle of a mission? Isn't exactly the time for her to shift through her emotions and motivations, even if she and Coulson are on a plane headed east.

Markov is – was – right. She murdered a group of people in Bulgaria, mostly using her Widow Bites, and SHIELD tends to make sure those who pull stunts like that don't do them again. And the argument can be made that she set up Sofia to come back and haunt her. A redhaired woman dressed in dark clothing, with glowing wrists, dispensing a form of justice to those who'd steal and sell young girls; a poetic image for one of those girls to latch onto.

The argument doesn’t last in her head any longer than it takes to form it. She can't bring herself to regret her actions, and she can't see the point. The girls had been freed, and if one of them had chosen to use that freedom to turn to being an obsessive hitwoman, then so be it. It was her call.

Natasha shakes her head sharply. Later. She'll poke at all of that later. The tracker is moving, and it's time to get back to work.

Or, at least, time to board a plane and ask Coulson if he brought any cards with him. It might not take over a week to get to the other side of Russia anymore, but it's still a damn long trip.

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OOM: 2011, Sochi

2013-07-30T06:23:36Z

( Sochi in the middle of summer is not exactly a place Natasha would care to visit )

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