He pauses in the doorway, when the light comes on. Shuts it behind him but doesn't move his eyes from her position on his couch, curled up with one of his books. It takes a while for him to decide that he's not hallucinating her being here, in his hideout... primarily due to the fact that he hasn't had a proper hallucination since before leaving Wakanda.
So. If his rather healed-up brain isn't suddenly and inexplicably on the fritz, then something else is going on, and she's really here.
"Well I picked some up." Shouldering the backpack he's wearing off and setting it on the floor, where several bottles clink together. "Is 'what are you doing here' a dumb and bullshit question?"
He doesn't seem surprised. He doesn't seem not surprised. Flipping another page of the book, she reads a few more lines (mostly for show), before snapping it shut and tossing it haphazardly on the coffee table. Bucky Barnes looks ... good. Good enough for a guy who ran away from protective custody and holed up in some Bulgarian backwater. His eyes are clear, expression open. He's lucid.
Some of the tension, imperceptible to most anyway, eases out of her shoulders. She's talking to Bucky Barnes. Not the Winter Soldier. She'd been ready for either, but honestly? This was the best case scenario.
"You didn't really think you could beat up the local mobsters and have no one notice? One of them has ties to the Kremlin, and has been making noise. It was either me or Ross," she replies, nonchalantly, nodding at the backpack. "You gonna serve us? I thought you army guys were all polite."
Doesn't answer the question of who sent her — but Steve feels like too weighted of a subject right now. Barnes had left Wakanda without a note, or even a text to Rogers. Had to be a reason, even if the reason was that he didn't feel he needed to give him a heads up.. and that's between the two of them, right?
"So. Get bored of hiding out with T'challa?" Not that she was exactly on speaking terms with him, either.
"Figured everyone else got better shit to get up to, these days," comes out of his mouth unbidden. Yikes. Too many feelings there, scout. Time to reel it in.
Her words have him blinking again and then he re-collects himself, picking the bag back up and turning towards the kitchenette in the two-room studio apartment... if a space divided by half a wall could constitute the definitional value of two rooms. From Natasha's position on the couch she can see the entire space, barring the small bathroom with the door shut.
Either way, Bucky? Only half focused on the details that surround him, now that there's someone in his space. Someone he knows and remembers, from the life between the first and the current. It's a little weird. He figures it would be, even if his brain hadn't had to be completely reconstructed from the hot mess it was before.
Glasses, he has a pair of those, and there are also pastries from a spot at the eastern end of the street that opens in these pre-dawn hours every day. He doesn't go in there daily, but he has made it something of a habit.
He tells himself that he needs to be less paranoid. That having one favorite place to visit wherein he says nothing to the proprietors and makes all his decisions known to them via pointing one gloved hand and shaking his head or nodding probably won't get anyone killed.
Except the Black Widow is on his couch. Reading a 1980s science fiction novel. Or, was, he supposes. So, you know. Maybe paranoia is not that terrible. Or at least, not that without use.
He pours the glasses about 80% full, introduces a splash of orange juice to each, puts them on a plate. Puts the box of pastries under the plate. Carries the entire thing from kitchen to couch, setting it down on the trunk with a scarf draped over it that's currently passing for a coffee table. Sits down, picks up one of the glasses and holds it out to her.
Once she takes it, picks up his own and lifts it in toast. "Za nashe obshcheye zdorov'ye, nashe obshcheye proshloye, nashe obshcheye budushcheye." Drinks it all and doesn't wince, but doesn't sit the glass back down either. "What do you want me to call you, now?"
Ah. So, he feels forgotten about? It's a surprisingly ... normal thing, considering who he is. Considering who they are. Is it any wonder that Steve has more on his plate right now than calling up Bucky and asking about his progress? (Though she has a hard time believing that they haven't been in touch at all — though maybe that's just her. After all, she hadn't heard much from Steve before he asked her to come here.)
Still, Bucky's halfway out of the room before she's crafted a careful response, and she lets him go. He's let something slip, they both know it, and her social skills have eroded in the weeks spent studying the outline of the Raft and how best to free everyone. Better he get his space and she work on trying to find something resembling empathy.
When he returns, she raises her own glass to him, "Vashe zdorov'ye," tips it back and drains it the same way that he does. Common past, he hints, and so she's only slightly off guard at his words. It's her turn to pause, to give something away — surprise in her eyes, then guarded wariness. If he remembers her, then...
"Natasha," she says, finally. "No one calls me Natalia anymore."
No one except him, a thousand years ago. Another time, another place — she'd like to convince herself that it was another Black Widow, too. But it's all jumbled together in her head, always; the conditioning, the memories of him (James), her defection.. All there, quieter most days, but never forgotten.
Forgotten isn't quite the word. He feels... set aside, in a strange way. Like a weapon people have decided to store in a bunker that will never see the light of day again. He understands that was not the goal, that thinking of himself like a weapon is not the most productive move, but that doesn't quite change the feeling does it?
It's foolish. But he'd rather be in the world than hiding out from it, even in paradise.
He doesn't belong there.
"Natasha," he repeats and finally sets the glass down, "a modern name for a modern gal." No one really says 'gal' anymore either, and he's well aware, but he will conduct a one-man resurgence of the term if at all possible.
"I didn't, at first. Didn't remember much of nothing useful or important to begin with." How much does she know, of the shitshow state his brain was in? How much he owes Wakanda, the Dora Milaje? Well. She knows some of it.
She was there. Again and again and then not and then. Again. Years later, when he'd already been forced to forget her. (Again, and again, and then not.)
Maybe she’d been naive to not consider this a possibility. That whatever they were doing in Wakanda might dig up other ancient history in addition to just getting rid of the conditioning. She’d stayed away for sensible reasons: he was Steve’s friend, he had enough going on, he’d shot her (twice!), there was no reason for her to be involved when she had her own plate full with staying off the radar and away from Ross. But now, here it is, laid out in the plain light of day.
Natasha stares at her glass, ruefully, then gestures for the bottle. They’re going to need more vodka for this.
“Steve doesn’t know,” she puts out there, conversationally. Seems like the most important thing to clarify, though she can tell already there are hurt feelings there. After all, she’s here, not Steve. “Never got around to telling him.”
She’s had decades to try and rationalize lies — white lies, lies of omission, lies to protect others… But in the end, it’s all dishonesty. No sense in trying to call it anything but what it is, at least in this case. Steve rarely asked about her past. She never told him about it. Whatever shared history she had with Bucky (James, it’s always James in her head, no matter how many times she tries otherwise), it hadn’t come up.
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redhourglass) wrote2022-10-14 08:28 pm
I won't excuse you, no :P
So. If his rather healed-up brain isn't suddenly and inexplicably on the fritz, then something else is going on, and she's really here.
"Well I picked some up." Shouldering the backpack he's wearing off and setting it on the floor, where several bottles clink together. "Is 'what are you doing here' a dumb and bullshit question?"
no subject
Some of the tension, imperceptible to most anyway, eases out of her shoulders. She's talking to Bucky Barnes. Not the Winter Soldier. She'd been ready for either, but honestly? This was the best case scenario.
"You didn't really think you could beat up the local mobsters and have no one notice? One of them has ties to the Kremlin, and has been making noise. It was either me or Ross," she replies, nonchalantly, nodding at the backpack. "You gonna serve us? I thought you army guys were all polite."
Doesn't answer the question of who sent her — but Steve feels like too weighted of a subject right now. Barnes had left Wakanda without a note, or even a text to Rogers. Had to be a reason, even if the reason was that he didn't feel he needed to give him a heads up.. and that's between the two of them, right?
"So. Get bored of hiding out with T'challa?" Not that she was exactly on speaking terms with him, either.
no subject
Her words have him blinking again and then he re-collects himself, picking the bag back up and turning towards the kitchenette in the two-room studio apartment... if a space divided by half a wall could constitute the definitional value of two rooms. From Natasha's position on the couch she can see the entire space, barring the small bathroom with the door shut.
Either way, Bucky? Only half focused on the details that surround him, now that there's someone in his space. Someone he knows and remembers, from the life between the first and the current. It's a little weird. He figures it would be, even if his brain hadn't had to be completely reconstructed from the hot mess it was before.
Glasses, he has a pair of those, and there are also pastries from a spot at the eastern end of the street that opens in these pre-dawn hours every day. He doesn't go in there daily, but he has made it something of a habit.
He tells himself that he needs to be less paranoid. That having one favorite place to visit wherein he says nothing to the proprietors and makes all his decisions known to them via pointing one gloved hand and shaking his head or nodding probably won't get anyone killed.
Except the Black Widow is on his couch. Reading a 1980s science fiction novel. Or, was, he supposes. So, you know. Maybe paranoia is not that terrible. Or at least, not that without use.
He pours the glasses about 80% full, introduces a splash of orange juice to each, puts them on a plate. Puts the box of pastries under the plate. Carries the entire thing from kitchen to couch, setting it down on the trunk with a scarf draped over it that's currently passing for a coffee table. Sits down, picks up one of the glasses and holds it out to her.
Once she takes it, picks up his own and lifts it in toast. "Za nashe obshcheye zdorov'ye, nashe obshcheye proshloye, nashe obshcheye budushcheye." Drinks it all and doesn't wince, but doesn't sit the glass back down either. "What do you want me to call you, now?"
no subject
Still, Bucky's halfway out of the room before she's crafted a careful response, and she lets him go. He's let something slip, they both know it, and her social skills have eroded in the weeks spent studying the outline of the Raft and how best to free everyone. Better he get his space and she work on trying to find something resembling empathy.
When he returns, she raises her own glass to him, "Vashe zdorov'ye," tips it back and drains it the same way that he does. Common past, he hints, and so she's only slightly off guard at his words. It's her turn to pause, to give something away — surprise in her eyes, then guarded wariness. If he remembers her, then...
"Natasha," she says, finally. "No one calls me Natalia anymore."
No one except him, a thousand years ago. Another time, another place — she'd like to convince herself that it was another Black Widow, too. But it's all jumbled together in her head, always; the conditioning, the memories of him (James), her defection.. All there, quieter most days, but never forgotten.
"I didn't think you remembered me."
no subject
It's foolish. But he'd rather be in the world than hiding out from it, even in paradise.
He doesn't belong there.
"Natasha," he repeats and finally sets the glass down, "a modern name for a modern gal." No one really says 'gal' anymore either, and he's well aware, but he will conduct a one-man resurgence of the term if at all possible.
"I didn't, at first. Didn't remember much of nothing useful or important to begin with." How much does she know, of the shitshow state his brain was in? How much he owes Wakanda, the Dora Milaje? Well. She knows some of it.
She was there. Again and again and then not and then. Again. Years later, when he'd already been forced to forget her. (Again, and again, and then not.)
"But I do now."
no subject
Natasha stares at her glass, ruefully, then gestures for the bottle. They’re going to need more vodka for this.
“Steve doesn’t know,” she puts out there, conversationally. Seems like the most important thing to clarify, though she can tell already there are hurt feelings there. After all, she’s here, not Steve. “Never got around to telling him.”
She’s had decades to try and rationalize lies — white lies, lies of omission, lies to protect others… But in the end, it’s all dishonesty. No sense in trying to call it anything but what it is, at least in this case. Steve rarely asked about her past. She never told him about it. Whatever shared history she had with Bucky (James, it’s always James in her head, no matter how many times she tries otherwise), it hadn’t come up.
“How much do you remember?”