(no subject)

[taiyny]

WHO: Natasha Romanoff
WHERE: Fountain, elsewhere
WHEN: September 6th
OPEN TO: Everyone!
WARNINGS: N/A, will update if needed
STATUS: Open

---

ARRIVAL;

Her lungs feel as though they're about to burst. Natasha feels the small push on her back, and she decides to take the advice; it's clear she's underwater, but the how and why is lost to her, and anyway, she'd rather attempt to not drown than dwell on it. She kicks up, claws her way through the water and surfaces with a loud gasp, arms flailing around for something to grab onto. They land on the edge of the fountain, and Natasha takes a second to catch her breath, hair plastered to her face and neck, what skin peeking through white as a sheet. She swallows thick, using one hand to pull her hair out of her eyes and looks around, first up at the rest of the fountain above her and then out at the village square she seems to be in the middle of. Buildings on three sides of her, with a wide open space on the fourth. Houses, off in the distance, with larger buildings clustered closer to the fountain. She looks back down at her feet treading water in the fountain and then hoists herself out. It's when she lands on her back that she realizes there's a backpack there, and Natasha rolls over to her stomach, shimmying out of the backpack. Once it's off, she sits up, back against the fountain, and unzips the bag.

Clothing. Underwear. A hat. Nothing else. She realizes then that she's not wearing the clothing she was wearing not even five minutes ago — it's a set of black scrubs and a pair of hiking boots instead, and Natasha frowns, picking at the fabric on her torso with a little bit of disdain.

Wherever she is, she thinks, she needs to find a place to dry off, first. And then, answers. It's not the first time she's been dropped in the middle of nowhere with nothing and been forced to survive. She's pretty sure it won't be the last, either. She stands up, brushes the dirt off her rear as best as she can and picks up the backpack. Natasha zips it up and slings it over her shoulder and starts heading for the nearest building. It's bound to have something she can use, right?


EARTHQUAKE;
The ground shakes. There's no warning to it, and Natasha's caught entirely unawares in her position just inside the inn, looking for... well, anything that can tell her just where she is, a lay of the land, a map, a newspaper, something. The entire building vibrates and Natasha goes completely still, gaze locked to the windows, but there's nothing out there that would be causing such a disturbance, at least not that she can see. So she beelines towards the door, although by the time she reaches it, the rumbling's stopped.

"Earthquake?" She mumbles to herself, gripping the wooden frame of the door, and it seems sturdy enough, or at least that it's held. If it was a 'quake, it wasn't a very big one, and nothing inside the inn seems to have been damaged. Nothing outside, either, if her initial sweep of the area just outside the door is any indication. Natasha steps outside, cautious of an after shock, and she starts looking for others, just to make sure they're alright.

Comments

[lastofthekellys]

It takes time and people to prepare enough food for the main meal of the day. Dinner, lunch, whatever people want to call it, Kate's been organising it for a month now at the Inn. At midday as the sun tells it, come to the Inn and have a meal. Come earlier to drop off food - game, yes, but as they are all getting used to knowing which plants to eat, more vegetables. More tubers, more leaves of various sorts. More flowers, more herbs, so the food is still all mostly subtle now, but improving. Unless they are all too hungry and it just tastes good, but Kate'd like to give herself some credit.

She's partly outside the Inn today for that reason: gathering some herbs for flavouring from the thick foliage that grows everywhere. But there's another reason. Clearing the field behind the townhall for the planting had revealed a number of edible plants there, the tubers of which either got eaten or stored. While things are cooking inside, and her volunteers don't need her supervision, Kate's taken the opportunity to do some gardening of her own. Trying to clear some land by the Inn to plant things again, control what's there. And collect what is edible in the process.

So it is that it takes Kate a moment or two to realise that someone is there.

She sings as she works, she always does, and she's just finishing the chorus of Let No Man Steal Your Thyme when something prickles.

She looks up, sees the strange red-haired woman, and straightens.

As she does, she's aware - how she'd never be aware previously - that she moves differently due to the corset under her blouse. Straighter. She wouldn't say rigid, just straighter. More precise. She's aware, too, that she's not wearing any of her red clothes today. No, it's her brown skirt and a simple white blouse and a white half-apron to protect the skirt anyway (all made from either tablecloths or sheets). The small cross around her neck, made from cloth and pieces of wood.

Well. She'll just... stand out. She usually manages to, anyway.

"Hello?" Kate says, aware, too, of her accent in ways she hadn't been before. No other people from Australia: she can hear herself how she sounds. "You're new, right? Just from the fountain?"

[taiyny]

Australia then, by the sound of it. Natasha stops, slowly drying in the midday sun, and bites back the retort that stems from her annoyance. This girl lives here, that much is clear — she's not dressed in scrubs, carries herself like she's wearing a corset. She fits this place, about as much as Natasha stands out in her soaking wet scrubs. Her mind is already racing on the possibilities but one thing is readily clear: it's not likely this girl’s fault that she's been brought here. Granted, she's apparently used to people being brought out of the fountain, but there's no malice in her words.

Instead, Natasha swallows her sarcasm and smiles instead (although it's a tight thing, not the welcoming thing she wants it to be), nodding.

“Yeah,” she says. “I'm afraid I don't know where I am. Can you tell me?”

[lastofthekellys]

Kate's own smile turns one-sided, crooked with almost companionable wryness. "Unfortunately," she says, getting to her feet with all the habitual ease of someone who is clearly used to corset, skirt, petticoat, "I can't, because I ain't got the faintest idea. Neither does anyone else here. I'm told we're probably somewhere in North America, maybe Pacific Northwest?

We've all been brought here, like you. Found ourselves in the fountain, in strange clothes, no idea how and who brought us here."

She is not comfortable with this, which can be clearly seen.

"But... There's accommodation, either in a house, or in this Inn, and we'll have some hot dinner soon enough."

It's not much of a consolation, Kate knows. But hopefully... Hopefully it's something.

[taiyny]

Out of all the answers Natasha had been expecting that was not one of them and she goes still, outright gaping at the girl before her. And then her mind snaps into work mode, because the possibility of this is — well, it's happening. Aliens in New York happened, too, even though she couldn't believe it, and Dark Elves in London and everything else that's happened to her since she'd met up with the Avengers. Killer robots, twins with magic powers, hell, she'd just met a king of an African country who puts on a fancy cat costumes and can keep up with a man with a fancy robot arm. All in all, this is really just par for the course anymore, as unbelievable as it sounds.

Natasha lets out the breath she's holding and nods, choosing (for now) to accept this at face value. Her prior assumption still stands: this girl isn't responsible for this, and shouldn't be held accountable. Natasha slips the bag off her shoulder and down into her hand, and this time smiles for real (if a bit wry).

"Food would be lovely. A place to dry off even better, and to hang these up so they can dry. This bag had a change of clothes. How can I get to the rooms?"

[womanofvalue]

Peggy's experienced scant few earthquakes in her life, but the minute the ground starts to move beneath her, she does what the survival manuals always instruct and heads for a doorway to ride it out. Given that she's currently nearest to the inn when it happens, she ducks there as quickly as she can, only noticing the strange woman across the room when the earth finally stills.

Until now, she's been rather on top of keeping an eye on who's coming out of the fountain, so seeing a stranger catches her rather off guard. "You're new," she says bluntly, her tact unfortunately left in a world pre-quake. "Sorry, that's rather to say, I haven't seen you before today. Are you all right?"

[taiyny]

Natasha's seen her. Her face had been plastered all over the Triskelion back home, along with Howard Stark and General Phillips. Peggy Carter, Founder of SHIELD, former director, and someone very close to Steve Rogers, although Natasha's never been able to suss out just out exactly what they were to one another. Mostly because she'd given up trying. Steve's history in World War 2 isn't something he's really been allowed to keep to himself. She wants him to at least have this.

Natasha's also recently been to her funeral, so Peggy's not the only one caught off guard. Natasha at least manages to not look like she's seen a ghost, but she certainly doesn't answer right away, studying the other woman's face carefully, debating. Not about whether or not to tell Peggy about being at her funeral, but about knowing who she is. Everything Natasha knows about Peggy fits into a file folder, but reading a stack of papers and actually knowing someone are two different things. Peggy was one of the best agents of her time, and had even bested one of Natasha's metaphorical forebearers at least twice, although Natasha had never learned Peggy's name in the Red Room, just about the Black Widow's failure and subsequent stripping of that title. The longer Natasha stands here and stares, the more likely Peggy is going to know something is up, and so Natasha smiles, relaxing.

"I am, yes. Does this happen often around here?"

[womanofvalue]

"I think we've been experiencing them for the last few days," Peggy admits. "Though, I'd only recently moved to Los Angeles before I got here and so I'm hardly what you can call an earthquake expert," is her wry remark, thinking that if Samberley were here, of course he might have a quick thing or two to say. Howard, of course, would already be trying to discover a way to monetize or weaponize it. "That said, last month, the plumbing in my house kept going mad."

"So, apparently, we've been through flooding and now earthquakes. If plagues of locusts are next, I'm going to have to file for immediate exit from life," she jests dryly, stepping out cautiously.

"I'm Peggy Carter."

[taiyny]

"I know."

She says it deliberately, without hesitation, and the corner of her lips turns up just a little in a knowing smirk.

"Natasha Romanoff. I used to work with SHIELD."

It's a bomb she's dropping, likely on two fronts, what with the incredibly obvious Russian name, and the fact she works for SHIELD. But there's no point in beating around the bush, talking about the weather or the acts of God. It doesn't suit either of them, Natasha thinks. And there's no point in hiding who she is.

[rangerbecket]

Earthquakes used to mean that the ground was shaking and that was it. After the kaiju, after San Francisco, those kind of movements mean a hell of a lot more to Raleigh and he's instantly on high alert as soon as he feels it. It's not a big earthquake, especially not compared to what he'd been used to along the Rim, but it's decent enough.

"This one probably wouldn't have made the news back home," he grumbles to himself, not bothering to throw on his shirt before heading outside to survey the damage. When he gets to the inn, there's a redhead he doesn't recognize that looks like she's doing the same thing and he gives her a quick nod.

"Don't think it was that bad. Didn't see any major damage, anyway. Might not have even been noticed in Hong Kong."

[taiyny]

Natasha raises an eyebrow at him, surveys him just once, up and then back down.

"How bad does it have to be for you to get dressed?" It's meant as a joke, and it comes out dry, and faintly unimpressed. Natasha crosses her arms, tossing her hair over her shoulder with a shake of her head.

"There's still the possibility of aftershocks. Or that this is the precursor to something worse."

[rangerbecket]

"There is," Raleigh agrees. "I've just spent a hell of a lot of time in the Pacific so my threshold for earthquakes is pretty high." That and usually the kind of earthquakes he felt were followed by giant sea monsters; this place is landlocked.

"But it's gotta hit at least a 7.0 before I bother with a shirt. Hey, look at it this way - if it had been a 3.0 or less I probably would have slept through it. I'd ballpark this somewhere between 4.0 and 6.0 since it actually woke me up."

[taiyny]

He gets a small laugh at that, and Natasha crosses her arms, gaze lingering just a hair too long on the scars across his chest and torso. Unusual, that. She looks back up to him, tilts her head to the side.

"So what kind of job in the Pacific lets you run around shirtless on a good day?"

[notabirdcostume]

Once again exploring the surrounding woods had been a bust. Well, that wasn't entirely true, Sam had managed to gather some herbs. He was slowly picking up on what wild plants were edible and which ones were best avoided. Sam hadn't been looking for plants, but he wasn't just going to let every trip to explore the woods be a waste -- they couldn't afford it.

It was because he had a bag full of plants that he was heading straight for the inn. His red scrubs were no longer quite as bright as they had been when he'd first arrived, but they were still one of the scrub colors that stood out the most -- besides the recently arrived girl in white scrubs.

Sam approached the inn contemplating the recent increase in earthquake activity. First flooding and now this, he wasn't sure what they were going to do if this got progressively worse. Would it hurt the garden or their other food supplies? He wanted to know and planned on asking around at the inn as well. His experience with earthquakes was fairly minimal after all.

As he drew closer to the inn, he noticed there was someone coming out of it. He looked up so that the bill of his baseball cap was no longer blocking his line of sight and he stopped in his tracks. He hadn't expected to see a familiar face today -- granted he never did. The fountain was too unpredictable to try and guess who would appear next.

"Natasha?" He had to be sure.

[taiyny]

Her head snaps up, because she knows that voice. She's been on a team with that voice for just over a year — or had been, anyway, a realization that hits her like a mac truck carrying a semi full of bricks. There was a time, once, when she'd have bolted back inside, avoided his question and tried to hide until she was ready. But that isn't her, anymore. The sense of self she's cultivated over the years, the layers and layers she's built up that were systematically stripped from her by her own hand — all of those things have morphed her into the person she is today, and that person stands still and watches Sam in his bright red scrubs.

Fitting, she thinks. Red suits him.

Natasha steps down off the porch slowly, dressed in her own black scrubs now finally dry enough that she feels like she can wear them without them sticking to her in uncomfortable places.

"Sam," she says.

[notabirdcostume]

Somehow he's not surprised she wound up in black scrubs. They might not know a whole lot about the color choices, but it was difficult to imagine Natasha in any other color -- though he knows that's not always how it works around here.

Putting that aside, he's actually only a little surprised to see her. The fountain was rather inconsistent with its activity, but it had always struck him as odd that of all the Avengers that would show up here first was him. It was just another of those strange things he could never explain because of how random everything seemed here.

More than the surprise though, he's actually a little glad to see her. While it's true that they hadn't exactly parted ways on the best of terms, for him that had been months ago now. Trying to survive here had put a lot of things in perspective and when you're life seemed so out of control, familiar faces were a plus even if you had been on different sides of a conflict before coming here. Although, going down that train of thought, Sam had to wonder when Natasha was even from--did she know about the conflict? Was she from the middle of it? This place kept throwing him weird twists in the timeline that he actually had to consider the possibility.

But, on the plus side, she was at least from a point in time that she recognized him. That conversation with Bucky, while brief, had been very odd.

Right, he should probably say something instead of just standing here. Sam offers her a lopsided grin, though it's smaller than what he might have given someone under different circumstances. This isn't exactly Disneyland. "Guessing you just got here. You get the grand tour yet or have you only see the bottom of the fountain and the inn?"

[taiyny]

There's a moment where Natasha is visibly taken aback by his attitude. The possibility flashes through her mind that he hasn't been through that conflict yet — that he doesn't know. He doesn't look terribly surprised to see her, appearance and all, and that's what makes her think, maybe, just maybe, he has. Which makes his acceptance of her just that much more surprising.

But then, they had bigger things to worry about at the moment than Steve or Tony or the Accords and who signed and who didn't. Like the fact both of them now have apparently nearly drowned in a fountain and woke up in the early 1900s with some scrubs and no idea what's going on. Whatever differences they have (and Natasha isn't entirely certain they have them; after all, she let Steve go in the end), they can set them aside and figure out what's going on. Sam's lopsided grin is met with one of her own, and Natasha finishes descending the steps.

"Are you offering to be my tour guide?"

Earthquake

[thesavior]

Emma hadn't been home the day the smaller quake hit, but rather on her way to drop things off at the Inn. She feels the first vibration and is absolutely muttering to herself as she finds the nearest doorway, clutching the frame as she waited out the quake. This was getting a little ridiculous but for the life of her she, couldn't find rhyme or reason to the events of the last few days.

Once Emma was sure that it was safe to move, she continued down the road. Emma spotted a redhead that she hadn't seen before, so she slowed down.

"Are you okay?"

[taiyny]

She's making her way down the main path in the village — there's been no damage that she's been able to see, but that doesn't mean there isn't any. No after shocks, either, which she's grateful for.

Natasha doesn't see the blonde woman at first, too pre-occupied with her own thoughts on the earthquake and it's potential disastrous effects, but when she hears a voice she looks up and heads over.

"I am. Are you?"

[thesavior]

The woman looked a little distracted and out of touch to Emma so she just didn't want to leave her until she sure the woman was okay since she had never seen her around before. Emma had a protective nature that she tried not to let it out too often, but here all bets were off in Emma's mind. She didn't know where her next meal was coming from or if they were going to get thrown another curveball.

"I'm always okay," Emma answered promptly. The true part is that she always says she's okay, the not so true part is that she's usually the furthest thing from okay. Most people called it a defense mechanism, but she called it life.

"Are you new?"

sept 10

[dnr]

Frank is around the Inn often enough, dropping off game, tending to the makeshift smokehouse in the butcher shop next door, but it's been a few days since he last swung by. This evening, though, when the house starts shaking hard enough to set his teeth, he grabs Aretha around the middle and gets outside, only to be greeted by a small geyser from busted pipe in the yard. Fantastic.

But it's not the damaged pipe that ends up worrying him — it's the water coming out of it. By the time Frank makes it down to the Inn in the now-fading light, man and dog are both covered in mud up to the knees and elbows. He rounds the front corner, bloodhound pup close at his side with her nose in the dirt, to find a woman he doesn't recognize.

"Everybody all right in there?" he asks, his steps slowing, and then, "You check the water yet?"

Re: sept 10

[taiyny]

"Fine as we can be," she says, not looking up from her position examining one of the cracked posts on the inn's porch. "I haven't had a chance to check the water ye—"

She says it as she stands up, turning around to face him, and she stops abruptly because no one, no one, alive and living in New York in December of 2015 wouldn't recognize the man standing before her. He's a little less beaten up and a little more rugged than the photos plastered all over the papers and CNN, but it's Frank Castle. The man they called The Punisher. Credited for hundreds of kills from all up and down the eastern seaboard, Natasha had followed the case with mild curiosity, bordering on an actual need to do so for her job. People like Frank weren't her problem, from an academic standpoint. The Avengers, as a whole, dealt with larger scale threats, things that threatened the security of the world as a whole. They didn't have the time or the inclination to micromanage cities, specifically, that's what the local law enforcement was for.

But watching the trial, dealing with Ross and the Accords, seeing him here and now, in the flesh, Natasha can only come to one conclusion: They're responsible. Not for bringing him in, or fighting him. But for creating him. How many more vigilantes were there they she didn't know about?

Her pause is noticeable, and she finally notices it, clearing her throat and continuing her thought.

"Yet. We've probably got at least one burst pipe, but I thought structural damage was more important to check first, to make sure the place doesn't collapse on us."

[dnr]

It's not a subtle hesitation, and there's a split second where he wonders if he's just got something on his face - it's been two months, after all, and here he's just been some guy to everyone but Sam Wilson. Even Wilson has been kind enough not to treat him any different. Maybe it had been stupid to get used to that.

"Yeah," he answers, but his voice has gone dry all of a sudden. He doesn't recognize her (does he?), but that doesn't mean the opposite is true. And just like with Wilson, much as Frank doesn't love to do it, he's not much for beating around the bush.

"You know who I am, don't you."

Earthquakes

[justaghost]

Bucky isn't familiar with earthquakes. He has read about them in the paper, heard of them once or twice on the radio, but as far as he is concern that is a west coast problem. A Yankee like him doesn't need to worry about it-- until the ground starts to shake under his feet. His first thought is to get under the table in the dining room. His mind races, thoughts of the war, his training, and bombs are the first thing on his mind. He only starts to think it's something natural when there is a lack of 'boom' after the shaking.

He finally crawls out from under the table, his eyes flashing around as if waiting for something to happen. He searches the house, making sure everything is still intact, but besides some things being knocked over it's in perfect shape. How strange. He finally heads outside. His first thought is someone might be hurt, something got destroyed, or something else terrible. The war really has made him kind of a pessimist. He heads to the Inn first, knowing that's where mostly everyone came at some point in the day.

"Hey," He speaks slightly out of breath, he might have run all the way here. "Everything alright?" He doesn't recognize the woman here. He wonders where Miss Kate is, but that he can worry about later.

[taiyny]

She watches him approach with rapt attention, eyes widening just a little when he gets close enough for her to really see him. It's a face she recalls from an exhibit in a museum, clean cut(ish), handsome, the only exhaustion present the exhaustion of living life in a war zone (and now here, she supposes). Both of his arms are flesh, his hair is short, and he doesn't handle himself with the taught caution of someone paranoid that everyone around him is trying to kill him — at least, not like she's seen before. The man before her is a soldier, not the soldier, and if she hadn't run into Peggy Carter only a short time ago, she'd probably have a lot more questions.

As it is, she only has the one: Has he realized I'm staring, and how am I going to play this off?

She smiles at him, a little relieved, relaxing her posture and coming down all the way off the steps, gesturing to the building behind her.

"Yes, thankfully. It was a small one, so there wasn't much damage aside from a couple of things falling off shelves. No injuries accounted for."

[justaghost]

He sees her stare, but honestly he has been getting a lot of that here. He isn't sure yet if its a good thing or not. He looks behind her to the building and he's happy to see that there isn't any permanent damage. Still, he hopes these quakes aren't going to be a normal thing around here.

"Good, that's the last thing we need in this place." At least in the battle field they have medics, here they just had roots and berries and he knows that nothing like that will cure a broken bone or bruises. "You didn't lose anything valuable, right?" If there is anything valuable here anyways.