fallaces sunt rerum species

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?"

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.

As far as the Russian Railways' records are concerned, Alyona Romanovna Nazarova bought out an entire second-class compartment for her trip to Moscow. Neither her name, nor her actions, raise any suspicions; it's a common tactic for women travelling alone, if they can afford it.

The woman locks her door, stows her luggage underneath one of the bunk beds, and pulls out a slightly battered copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses in the original Latin before settling herself on the lower bunk. Not that she finds her place to start reading, or even starts to actually relax – that has to wait until the train pulls out of the station and clears the city.

Finally, Natasha rests her head back against the panelling and looks out the window. Her passport might say Nazarova, but in this case, it's just a name. Not a persona with different mannerisms, a different voice, a personality that is only enough of her for her to sustain it. Just a name and some fake dates, and it's too much of a relief.

She's tired, is the problem.

(So tired.)

It's partly why she's on a train instead of a plane. Three days on a train being herself is as good as a vacation, or so she told Coulson earlier, and it gives the team time enough to hunt things down.

Good as a vacation, she repeats to herself in the privacy of her mind, and then lets her mouth curl sardonically. What she wants is to go home. Home with books and clothes that smell like her, and kitchens where she knows where everything is, and Clint. Home is where she is known by a very limited number of names, most of them derived by something else on the list.

Natasha Romanoff. Nadine Rommel.

Nat. Rome. Dee.

Home.




She's tired, so it takes until she's finished Book IV of the Metamorphoses for her to realise what she's done. When she does, she lifts her head abruptly, and stares at the panelling directly opposite her.









“Well...fuck,” Natasha mutters to herself. Being in the middle of potentially long mission when she's this damn tired is no time to work out she's in love with her best friend, and has been for long enough that she's redefined her concept of everything in its place to include one Clinton Francis Barton being in the immediate vicinity.

(This is the advantage of buying out the entire compartment for herself; she has complete privacy to sit there, eyes shut and palm pressed against her forehead in disbelief at her ability to ignore the obvious.)

Annina Rolanovna Nevzorova goes by Nina in the US. Sometimes Annie, but mostly it's Nina. She paints dark lines around her eyes before she straps on her gun, and has a reputation for honesty and being a good businesswoman.

When Nina walks through the door of Roman's café in Orlando, the ex-KGB operative-turned-gangster brightens. He's an old man who likes to think that he misses home, and she's a gunrunner who speaks Russian with a Volga Region accent; what's not to like?

“Sit, sit,” Roman says, all generosity. “Coffee? On the house, my dear. Have you been watching the news?”

Nina smiles at him, a niece to a favourite great-uncle. “Was it the monsters or the robots that caught your attention?”

“Robots!”

Robots are controllable; robots have a price; things that have prices have markets. Markets are things very, very dear to Roman's heart.

It still takes three cups of coffee for her to get the intel, and the deal, that she needs. Robots and monsters, and armies shooting at their own universities, and the mess that Iron Man has made of made of several depots.

It's enough to make anyone jumpy.

That jumpy extends to the feds watching Roman's door, and it only takes Nina-Natasha block to realise that she's got a tail.

Great.

She heads towards the crowds, weaving in and out of people almost leisurely, walking into shops and taking their second exist. It's in one of those shops, a quirky little tourist trap, that Natasha busies herself with a keyring rack.

Dolphins feature heavily, but the one she picks up has an orca arching into the air across.

It also has SeaWorld scrawled across it.

Natasha smiles.

“This one, thanks.”

– –

Sometime later, an envelope arrives in a post office box belonging to Jason Brandt. In it is the keyring, and a letter that says simply,

I haven't forgotten

H.


(Natasha always did like signing her messages with her Cyrillic initial, and this hardly the only touristy knick-knack she's sent to Clint over the years.)