OPEN POST / HELP ME VOICE TEST

[multitasking]

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O P T I O N A L - M E M E - L I N K S

hurt/comfort ←
dark au ←
amnesiac shipping ←

Comments

[snowstormed]

if i have wounded you if all the butterflies that i forged in your stomach pour from open breast then flee for window then cease to impress i apologize

[multitasking]

[ steve pushes to save him, not stop him. there's a small, quiet and largely unacknowledged part of natasha that is glad. she doesn't know if she would have made the same call, had it been her left with her finger on the button, a single word between destruction and redemption.

she's always been good at difficult decisions, but sometimes she wonders if really it's saving someone that's harder.

it takes weeks for her to ask to be put on the rotations - and even once she's in she never shows her face. she makes quiet observations, tiny little scratches of pencil on paper as she details every single movement, and she waits. for what, natasha isn't certain of, but she waits. she can't be sure how much SHIELD - or whatever they're calling the little they have left - knows about their history, and for now at least she isn't taking chances.

one day he opens his eyes, and there's something in the way the corners of his mouth turn down and the impassioned gaze towards the ceiling that changes her mind. it's the first time she's had to prepare herself for something in as long as she can remember, and the slight increase in her heart rate is an unwelcome intrusion. a breath is sucked in through her teeth, and then she steels her jaw before pushing open the door and finally stepping into the winter soldier's line of sight. ]

Do you know where you are? [ her voice is cool and calm, calculated to demonstrate no hint of emotion one way or another, and after a moment she raises her eyes from the sheet of paper in front of her, filled with her notes on the man in front of her, and really looks at him. ] Do you know why you are here?

herp derp comics history au-thingy with amnesia and idefk super hero pain

[kulak]

[ The dank, concrete basement of an underground bunker is silent, aside from the hum of air circulation and water passing through pipes between the walls, as the Winter Soldier waits with Black Widow for the others to make it back from a run for supplies. SHIELD, or whatever remained of them, had become a much more literal underground operation since the incident with the helicarriers, and while he had no intention to be working alongside Steve Rogers, the man had an annoying habit of showing up anywhere he'd tried to disappear to. And getting himself nearly killed in the process of trying to follow him.

Thus, begrudgingly, here he is, sitting across a debriefing table from the Russian assassin who seems to know more about him than what his files alone entail. Whose eyes and hair and set of her lips seem to nag at his mind, somewhere in the back, tugging at a string that won't come loose. ]

You haven't told him you know me.

[ Not 'you haven't told me', because the Winter Soldier - not James Barnes, not Bucky - still doesn't look at his hands and think that they're his. That he's flesh and blood and soul and agency, not a tool put on a dusty shelf until someone needs to die, quickly and without making more of a ripple than needed.

But Steve Rogers is a man, a hero, with morals and emotions and attachments. Things the soldier feels as word echoing around in the shell of what he is, and since waking from the cycle HYDRA put him in, Steve had been the only one that really stuck to a part of him and refused to be washed away. Natasha (Natalia Alianovna Romanova) has become the second. They'd met before - he knows that because they told him that - but he doesn't memorize the faces of targets or roadblocks. They doesn't show up in dreams, or seem to burn an after image in the back of his lids. He doesn't hear short catches of conversations he never had echoing in their voice just as they leave the room.

She knows him, and for whatever reason, she's keeping it to herself. Perhaps it's not a great memory (most involving him and what he was wouldn't have been), but something's there. ]

Why?

[multitasking]

[ James Buchanan Barnes. That's his name - his full name, the one that belonged to him long before he'd ever met Natasha - but she hasn't said it aloud yet. She hasn't used any name to identify him yet, there's hardly a need when they are the only two in the room, but she's been careful to avoid it all the same. To her he was Winter Soldier, comrade, to Steve he'd always been Bucky, but now -

Well. Now he was a complication, an unnecessary liability, and one that she's not entirely sure she could abandon, if it ever came to that. Steve wouldn't ever accept any terms other than reform, though, so she holds herself safe in the knowledge that she won't have to make that decision. Not for a while, at least. But here they are, and she can't she his name. She won't, because he has to choose it for himself. Natalia Alianovna Romanova, she'd been, and then Black Widow, and when she'd come out the other side her first choice had been her name. Natasha Romanoff. Close enough to keep her past at the forefront of her mind, to never let herself forget the red still so present in her ledger, but her own choice.

He has to make a choice, and until then all she can do is wait. ]

I didn't think it relevant.

[ It's a half-truth, one shrouded in all the best training of a clear gaze and steady voice. She wonders vaguely if he recognises the training, wonders if he remembers the drills that they put all of the recruits through. She wonders if he remembers seeing little girls swear blind that they were American born and bred, in perfect Brooklyn accents until those little girls almost believed it themselves. She wonders if, somewhere deep down, he even remembers what she looks like when she's telling the truth. ]

Steve's involvement in...this- [ meaning 'you', of course, but she doesn't say that ] - is complicated enough.

[ And she pauses for a moment, brows tensing just enough that she almost looks thoughtful before she adds: ] Why haven't you said anything?

[ He doesn't remember enough to divulge any real details, of course, and she's not worried. But she is curious. She can't help it. ]

[kulak]

[ He's studying her as she's speaking - the cold calm she keeps, and he knows she could be telling him the sky is purple with the same tone and expression. Picking up a lie is near impossible, but that's what she was trained for.

Not relevant. It doesn't seem nonrelevant, for all he's been getting short flashes of her, broken off pieces of sentences in Russian, quiet and personal, between two. Maybe it's just from being around her constantly that he's seeing more of her in his memories, but he can't really be sure. ]

I wouldn't know what to say.

[ Said as his head tilts to the side, eyes studying. Essentially - I don't know what the hell's going on, but you sure do. How about you share that? In truth, he could have mentioned that his suspicions over it, sure, but he could mention a million things to Steve Rogers that he doesn't. With Steve, conversations are clipped, only saying what's necessary, unless the man focuses all his attention to prying something from him. He has a particular talent for that, or maybe it's just persistance. Either way, he's never been in the habit of just sharing things and talking without a definite reason for it. He'd been waiting for it to rise on it's own, like most of the memories have been doing lately. ]

He's trying to kickstart my memory. [ Granted, it's not the Winter Soldier Steve's wanting to bring back, and Natasha wasn't around in the 40s. Still, it's not a great excuse. ] Wouldn't it help?

[fossils]

idefk bullshits this at midnight let me know if it's meaningless drivel

[multitasking]

[ Honestly, she wishes she could remember how this had all started. Probably a snide remark on her part, if she's being realistic, something that brushed all those morals up the wrong way and reminded Steve how she's on the wrong side of the grey scale.

Or maybe it wasn't even that, maybe she's reading the situation all wrong - it doesn't happen often, but it does happen - and maybe this all rests squarely on her shoulders. Maybe finally acquiring something of a friendship beyond professional courtesy means accepting that disagreements will happen sometimes, but it's been a long time since Natasha has referred to anyone as a friend. You can't really blame her for being rusty. ]

Will you just listen. [ Slamming her fist against the solid metal surface she'd previously been leaning against had been unwise, uncharacteristically spontaneous, and the outburst had taken her by as much surprise as it had Steve. Her knuckles are starting to bruise already, but better a bruised fist than a bruised jaw.

(Supersoldiers are hard to bruise, sure, but that doesn't mean she couldn't have tried). ]

I'm never going to be a hero. You're Captain America, I'm a spy. You're a public figurehead, I'm a well-kept secret. I can't change to fit into your moral standards. [ And at last some of the tension drops from her shoulders as she shrugs: ] I won't.

[ She hasn't argued with someone like this in a long time, either, and the sensation is entirely unpleasant. It's not often she deals with new experiences any more, and this is one she'd not like to repeat. It's much easier when everyone is kept at arms length, maybe then she wouldn't care so much about where Steve views her moral standpoints any more.

...Then again, she hadn't cared aboard the ship either, and look how that had turned out. ]

wot is drivel i see none

[fossils]

[ Public figurehead. Even after New York he got the kid gloves treatment from most of the agency. Most. All the friendly banter, teasing, that's been their language since SHIELD first decided to pair the two for (super)special ops - and if those are the gloves she chooses to handle him with, well, Steve doesn't mind it so much.

(grey scales aside, it was always the day he might've had to accept that all along she'd only been another painted room that bothered him most)

The sound of her fist hitting metal gets a wince out of him. There's nothing friendly about this particular conversation but it's the body language, the slammed fist, the sort of slip that even Steve can see, that causes a shift. He doesn't have her ability to read people, not by half. She sees what's there, assesses and calculates and adapts quicker than any physical reflex. But for him? Right now he's stuck on what might be, how he wants her to see it too.

It's certainly in him to charge an opening, only with her he hesitates. Knows she'll read that too, in the wince and the lack of a quick retort. It takes a second caught in indecision before the frustration on his face slips away in an exhaled breath. ]

Not asking you to change, Natasha. We all watched you fly an alien scooter to the top of a skyscraper and save New York City from being blown off the map. Think that already makes you a hero. [ Think it's already in you to be more. It's his tone that says the rest of it: disappointment. That when she says can't he thinks she means won't.

His gaze, locked on her this entire time, now strays to her battered hand. ] Better get ice on that.

[ And he's already ducking over to the fridge. ]

gently overloads inbox back yr welcome

[multitasking]

[ Of course he's going to find ice already, and it's all Natasha can do not to roll her eyes. Instead she keeps her eyes fixed on his movements, tries to look through him rather than at him, and when she's sure that Steve's back is turned she flexes the hand still pressed firmly against the bench. He's right, of course. It's already bruising, and it's such a careless mistake that it takes another small shift of the muscles along her fingers, a small jab of pain for her to truly confirm it actually happened.

She doesn't make mistakes. Black Widow doesn't make mistakes, and she certainly doesn't hit things when she's angry. ]

New York was...[ different, maybe, or complicated - she likes that one. Complicated can mean a lot of things, and New York does to. She helped save a lot of lives that day - but how much of that had been self-preservation? How much of that had been cold-blooded revenge for dancing inside of Barton's head and scrambling the wires until he looked at her the same way she'd first looked at him? How much of it was really being a hero, and how much of it was the usual muddy conclusions that she'd been wading through her whole life?

None of that makes it out of her mouth though. Her shoulders hunch just slightly, muscles taut in her back as she seriously considers walking out, but she needs that ice, and she probably prefers Steve around to not.

(Probably, she thinks, as though 'probably' cuts it for the first person to be able to provoke an emotional reaction from her since Clint). ]..unusual circumstances.

[ All the information is there for the taking now, and she can't help but wonder if he's looked into it - looked into her. She wonders if he has poured over the files now in public domain the way she had when Fury first suggested she team up with Captain America.

He'd told her that friends usually ask each other that kind of information. She'd told him to stop being such a child. ]

Unrealistic expectations do more damage in the long run, Steve.

[ The words are barbed, but her expression is a careful mask and her eyes are trained on her darkened knuckles. She's not quite sure who she's trying to convince anymore. ]