sixthiterationlogs | arrival and exploring

Entry tags:

arrival and exploring

WHO: Natasha Romanoff, one person or group for her arrival, and anyone who wants to find her wandering around
WHERE: starting at the fountain, then most likely up and down every road in the place taking an inventory of her surroundings
WHEN: Sunday afternoon for her arrival, exploring the town can cover the next couple of days
OPEN TO: all
STATUS: open

NOTES: Please let me know where and when you'd like to run into her in your subject line. if you have an idea for a starter that you're not sure of, hit me up on plurk or discord and we can talk about it.

arrival - still open

It's possibly not as surprising as it should be, coming into awareness far enough underwater that the pressure in her ears almost hurts and she can't see what's around her. One moment, she's lying down with a headache, a mild anti-inflamatory and a glass of water. The next, her head is clear and the water is murky and everywhere. There's weight on her back, straps, she shucks them quickly. The boots, waterlogged and heavy, won't come off as easily. She skips that and begins kicking for the surface. Her hands find a wall quickly, and she pushes off, hoping to use the momentum to get her to the surface, only to be brought up short by something else. So it's not wide, only deep. She points herself straight up, struggles toward what she can now see is a small patch of weak light.

By the time she breaks the surface, the headache is back. She knows it will pass, though. It's not much work to heave herself out of the fountain and onto the stone path, lying on her back, arms above her head, sucking in deep breaths to clear her head. She takes a brief inventory. She has no injuries, sturdy boots, black hospital scrubs. Or perhaps another dark colour and they only look black because she's soaked. The weather is mild, wherever she is. Not dark enough yet to see any stars for help in determining her exact location.

exploring

The way out is not back through the fountain. That would have been too easy. So all that leaves is every other conceivable options, and quite a lot of ground to cover. She starts with the buildings closest to the fountain - the blacksmith, the police station, the inn, then over to the the butcher and baker, and further along that road to the hospital, schoolhouse, and town hall. She doesn't go looking for people specifically, not right away - just for the lay of the land. She works her way out further, traveling down winding roads, counting out houses and making mental note of which seem to be occupied and which appear deserted. Every path out of town brings her up short, and adds to her frustration. There is a way out, she just can't find it. That doesn't sit well with her. None of this does.

SUNDAY
afternoon - arrival - n/a
afternoon - schoolhouse - Kira
afternoon - town hall - Peggy
evening - mill - Clint

MONDAY
morning - police station - Wanda

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Wanda was wearing a white tank top with a pair of black jeans that she'd been lucky enough to find shortly after her arrival. She had swung by to see Sam however he wasn't at the police station when she arrived. A frown touched her lips but she turned to leave, figuring that she'd see him later that night anyway. Her feet paused mid-step as a familiar figure stepped into view.

Her guard instantly rose. She hadn't know that Natasha had arrived and she wasn't sure what to do about it. Sam had told her that people arrived from different times and Peggy proved that fact. So would Natasha see her as an enemy or an ally.

This was more complicated than Wanda liked. She waited a half second before speaking. "Natasha?" Her accent was a give away for a spy like Natasha but Wanda didn't think that mattered.

Natasha is still in the black scrubs from the day before, hair finger combed and braided, the natural curl keeping it from coming undone. She no longer looks like she just dragged herself out of a fountain, and armed with Clint's explanations, she at least has the lay of the land and a general history.

Wanda looked tense, but fine, though Natasha noticed how that tension only really amped up when she was spotted. She just nodded her head at the girl, acceptance and recognition. "Wanda. Are you all right? You look..." She raised a hand, twirling her finger around, trying to encompass the look on the girl's face and the set of her shoulders.

The tension slowly ebbed from Wanda’s shoulders. She greeted the woman with a nod, pausing a moment before speaking. "It’s been awhile." She finished Natasha’s sentence with a tired smile. "A lot has happened." She hadn’t been sleeping well but Wanda wasn’t the sort of person to push her woes onto a person so easily. She liked Natasha, trusted her and looked up to her, but there were few that Wanda openly spoke about her problems too.

"How long have you been here?" She hadn’t known that Natasha was in the village though considering how often she spent in her room it wasn’t much of a surprise. Wanda was slowly finding ways to be useful in the village.

"Not that long." Natasha's feelings about most of her life were complex at the moment, to say the least. Almost everyone she'd thought she could rely on had let her down in one way or another. She felt very much on her own, which wasn't exactly a new feeling, but it was difficult to go back to a life that closed off once you knew what it was like to be part of something bigger. Now, to be a fish out of water in a much more literal sense, it was just another layer.

Thoughts for another day, though. If she got lucky, thoughts for no day at all. She didn't really want to go poking at her own murky depths. Nothing good ever came from that. "Not sleeping?"

Wanda shook her head. There really was no point in lying to Natasha when she asks such a pointed question. "This place keeps us on our toes." She didn't know if she should mention her brother, the sickness or anything that's happened. Wanda almost wished that she could leave it in the past.

"It's good to see you." Any friendly face was nice. "I was wary before. Thor told me that people come from different times." Which could easily be a problem for Wanda considering how she met the Avengers.

"Do you know where you are staying?"

Natasha nodded. "And you thought I might have been from when you were still trying to kill me and my friends." A fair worry. Natasha's hair is different, darker, longer. In a moment of reflexive worry, though, she could understand not focusing on anything more in depth than the recognition. Wanda's skillset is worlds away from her own. Why bother learning to read people when you can just read them?

"I've got a place to sleep. I stayed in one of the empty houses last night. It was fine." Just in case she ends up staying in the mill again, she'd really rather Clint be the only one who knows.

Wanda's lips twitched into a light smirk. "You're right. Sorry. I thought Clint might have said." She assumed that they spoke though she hadn't hide time to speak with Clint formally about Natasha's arrival. It was odd having no schedule and yet being to busy to speak to each other every single day.

"I think there is an empty room with us. I can tell Clint and Sam if you want to stay there." She wasn't going to ask them, Wanda would just tell them. Natasha was one of them and they had to stick together.

"Thanks for the offer. I think I might be best on my own for a while, though. Get my head on straight. Things weren't exactly rainbows and kittens when I left. Not that I'm saying this is any better." A lot in her mind right now, though, and she was still mad at herself for allowing these attachments to run so deep. Sloppy. She knew better than that.

Not something she wanted to talk about, so she flipped the topic off of her. "He says you're holding your own. I assume that means the two of you have been continuing your training?"

Wanda nodded her head. "Alright. It's there if you want it." She wanted them to be a team again. It bothered Wanda that the Avengers seemed to be falling apart when she'd been brought here. She didn't want to lose the small family that she'd gathered.

"Yes. My powers are..." She shifted uncomfortably. "Weaker here. I've been practicing them and other methods of fighting."

Families fell apart, just like everything else. Natasha had been prepared to sacrifice the last of her high ground to keep hers together, and it had still all blown up in her face. It wouldn't last, none of it. Sad but true. Still, Wanda didn't need that dumped on her. She'd figure it out soon enough.

So instead, Nat just nodded. "Maybe later." She doubted it, but it was clearly what the girl wanted to hear. "Wanda... what's the last thing you remember from back home?"

Wanda doubted it too but she knew enough to say nothing further on the topic. Steve and Vision were the only two who regularly lived at Headquarters with her. Everyone else had lives and while Sam and others would come by to practice, it was only sometimes.

"Clint was saving my from house arrest." He hadn't yet but she knew that's what happened next after speaking to Clint.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

Natasha had let herself love her little group of misfits, of people broken in ways that made her feel like there was some hope. Steve, who turned it into something truly sensational, all the way down to Bruce, just trying to cope. They'd all made her believe, for a little while, that maybe the reason life broke some people was to let them find others, also broken, who could understand them enough to take them the way they were. They'd made her believe she could need people, and not be let down. She'd never had home, but for a while, she'd come damn close.

"Later than that," she said softly. "Things... don't turn out well." She wouldn't sugar coat things. Wanda didn't deserve to be lied to.

"Are you from the same time as Clint?" He hadn't told her very much of the future either and while a part of her wanted to know, another part didn't.

Wanda didn't see a happy future from her time and knowing her past made it difficult to believe that everything turned out perfectly well. They were going to break apart, the moment that she agreed with Clint was the moment that she turned her back on the accords and Vision.

Her teeth bit into her lower lip, knowing what she would do in that situation. "You don't have to tell me." It's better if she didn't know anyway.

"It's probably better that way," Natasha said quietly, mirroring the girl's thought. No good would come from knowing how things fell apart. It certainly hadn't brought Natasha any joy or comfort. Far from it. She wouldn't lie to her, but that didn't mean she had to detail how everything fell apart, did it?

Time for a change of topic. "What were you coming down here for? Building's empty." Maybe not always, but it was empty now.

"We keep the farm animals here." She pointed behind her where there were goats in one of the jail cells. "It was for the winter, to keep them inside." She was just checking on things, making sure that none of the goats had decided to try and escape for a second time.

"I was just leaving."

Natasha manages a small smile over her shoulder at the disinterested goat, who doesn't spare her so much as a glance. "You know, I was specifically avoiding talking about the goat in the jail cell. Criminal goats were going to be just about beyond my level of too weird to handle. So, thank you, for that tiny bit of sanity restored."

Wanda's lips twitched into a smile. "You're welcome." She understood why Natasha and Clint were so close. Wanda didn't think that she'd have that relationship with Natasha, not after everything that has happened but she would always be there for the other Avenger. It was the least that she could do.

Clint was the closest thing Natasha had to family, probably the closest thing she ever would have. He was her brother. Those kids of his were her niece and nephews, Laura her sister. Her family. He'd taken a chance on her when no one else would have, and he'd brought a killer into his family just to prove to her that she could be something more. No one was ever going to have that relationship with Natasha. Didn't mean she didn't care about the rest of them. Didn't mean she hadn't looked on their team as a different kind of family.

The jailhouse, it seemed, would not give up any answers to her. She sighed a little, and put her hands on her hips, giving one last look around. "So, the barn. Check." She nodded her head at the door. "Where were you going after checking on the goat?"

"Home. I have other animals that I need to check on there." It was only six baby chickens but Wanda didn't like leaving them to their own devices, more so with them living in the house.

Natasha was always welcome to come by though it was an unspoken invitation. One that Wanda was sure that the other would understand.

"If we're not careful, we're all going to turn into farmers." Natasha nods her head to the door of the jail, indicting both her intention to leave the building, and invitation for Wanda to walk with her. At least as far as their paths run parallel. "Does it feel like home?"

Wanda didn't know if she minded being a farmer. She hadn't once considered 'farmer' as a career choice. It was almost too peaceful.

Her tongue dragged over her lips as she headed towards the door. "Not home but no longer strange." It had been a long time since Wanda had felt at home. It was always difficult for her, more so since her brother died, but while she was here she was trying to find home.

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arrival and exploring

exploring - the police station

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