she's a killer queen

[iwasrussian]

WHO: Natasha Romanoff
WHERE: Fountain, woods, inn
WHEN: May 29th
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Violence, spoilers for Infinity War

---

fountain & woods

Natasha isn't sure when exactly it happened, but it's an uncomfortable shift that gives her barely the time to notice that it's even happening. One moment she was looking over Steve's shoulder, his hand touching the ground where his best friend was and in a blink after that, moments after coming to it was realized she was underwater.

She acts fast, pushing herself to the surface while noticing certain things that weren't what they were what they seemed to be moments earlier. Different clothes, a bag on her back and something around her wrist. None of it made any sense and while the ex-spy was able to put that much together, as soon as she emerged and took a look around, there was no quick understanding as to where she was.

Slowly, she lifts herself out without much of a sound and instead of stay there to go through the bag and investigate the device on her wrist, Natasha is off to find the person who dropped her in the fountain in the first place. They couldn't have gotten far.

Taking to the woods, Natasha sticks to hiding for the first little while. Both looking for familiar faces and anyone that appears to be in charge.

inn

None of it makes any sense, nor has it sunk in that any of it's real. The concept is.. well, believable, given what she's just come from. But that's something she'll need to process later.

A walk turned into arriving at the inn; a place she was told had food and drink. She didn't have much of an appetite, but she was rather hoping for a drink.

Comments

[freightcars]

It's by pure happenstance that Bucky's passing through the woods at the same time as Nat happens to be camping out in it. The shortest route between the Blacksmith and the Inn is straight through the woods near spawn fountain, and he's on his way back around the time she's getting her bearings.

He's not exactly naturally loud, but he's fallen into something of a comfortable nature here and doesn't creep. Doesn't hide his footsteps. Doesn't try to hide, as such Nat can probably hear him coming from several yards in any direction. His boots catch on twigs and branches, his clothing scrapes and slides against the flora of the place, and he walks without keenly observing the world around him.

In fact, he seems almost lost in his own head, eyes on the ground, hair falling around his cheeks, absent and easy prey for once. Apparently his time in Wakanda has laxened his diligence, because he passes within feet of her without even noticing it.

[iwasrussian]

It's that ease to which Bucky has taken that draws her attention first and keeps it until she is able to see who it is. When she does, she's quite surprised, particularly since she knows his history well enough and trust is not a thing people like them can do easily. Still, Natasha doesn't know all the details but he moves about like some of the others who clearly have been there awhile.

How? She isn't sure of that answer yet. Last time she saw him, he was a pile of ashes in Steve's hand. Then again, so were a lot of others. So how was this happening?

This is clearly another issue of control, though to what level? Natasha decides to find out and steps out several yards behind him, making her presence known.

"I didn't think it was possible you could let yourself get so comfortable so quickly in a strange place." she says by greeting, in Russian.

While the concept of the multiverse was something she knew existed, travelling to it was yet to be experienced. This was where James would need to share what he's learned so far.

[freightcars]

The abrupt sound of a voice does startle him, and for a moment before he recognizes it he braces himself for a fight. Shoulders tighten, fists clench, and he whirls around combatively, eyes wild. Once he's already turned, though, the gears in is mind whirr and click, attributing a face to the voice.

Natasha Romanoff.

He's still for a moment, eyeing her warily. They've been on tentative ground every time they've met; she earned a place of favor when she let him and Steve leave Leipzig, and they fought on the same side of the war, but he's got distinct memories of her thighs around his neck like she planned on snapping his neck from atop his shoulders. Their standing is uncertain and their relationship is complex.

"Здесь нет никаких угроз," is his cautious reply, "еще нет."

His fists unclench, his shoulders soften, and he takes a tentative step forward. It's an olive branch, a tentative step toward greeting. They may not be on hug levels, but he figures maybe a handshake might be appropriate. It's nice to see a familiar face, really nice.

[iwasrussian]

Natasha stands straight and doesn't move forward. She eyes him with her full attention, but not as warily as he is with her. Steve shared with her the progress reports he'd made in Wakanda with Prince T'Challa's sister and quite frankly, hearing about that interests her more than it should. The once spy is curious to know if there are lingering memories or if he'll remember her now beyond a threat that needed to be removed. They never got the chance to talk before Thanos arrived and the battle was on to save the world.

"Я только что прибыл. Вы ожидаете, что я верил этому?" she replies, staring at him with a questioning lift of a brow.

Even as he steps closer, she keeps still. If he attacks, which she's pretty sure he won't, Natasha still has the room to retaliate.

[freightcars]

He eases forward slowly but surely, and stops when he's three or four feet away. Once there, he simply shrugs his shoulders at her question, lips pursed, a sort of reluctant persistence. He's been here for days, so far the biggest threat has been tripping and falling over a log or something. Not exactly a Wakandan battlefield, that's for sure.

"I just got here too, maybe a week ago." He says, switching to English because he thinks they both find the language less threatening. It's got a softer sound to it, fewer bad memories. "If anything's trying to kill us it's taking a long time to do it."

And with that said he reaches a hand out, a real one, his good hand, to shake. Adds on an honest if uncertain sounding, "It's good to see you."

Inn

[womanofvalue]

Peggy is beginning to think that there's a pattern here. She wonders if perhaps she's meant to be a constant magnet that draws the others to her (and here) and if that's the case, she wonders if she owes them an apology of sorts. Natasha looks different, this time, but still like her. There's something in the movement, a determination and a confidence, and Peggy might be wrong, but she'd bet at least her dinner that it's her.

From where she's working on her map, Peggy offers a brief smile and a nod to encourage Natasha to join her, if she'd like. If she has recently returned, Peggy is sure that there are plenty of questions. "You look like you've seen better days," she observes.

[iwasrussian]

At the comment, Natasha looks up to see a face that she'd only be able to recognize from a portrait hung on a wall in the basement of an abandoned military base. Peggy Carter, a woman who Steve didn't want to talk about and who helped start the very organization that gave her a second chance. It was a bit surreal standing there in front of the other woman, but it didn't show.

Natasha moves towards her, glancing down at the map before lifting her gaze. "Well," she starts with a small smile and a hint of sarcasm that shouldn't be taken personally. "It hasn't exactly been a great week."

Though by then Natasha has been told she's been there before, she still can't help the distance that normally comes with meeting someone for the first time.

"And you look like someone who has a set of skills that aren't being appreciated."

Oh, it didn't take long for the spy to learn everything she could about the woman sitting in front of her. The painful part was knowing that her own set of skills wouldn't come in use there very often either, which gave them something in common.

[womanofvalue]

"No, I can't imagine it would be," Peggy says, knowing that visuals alone won't give her an explanation, but she's been a spy long enough to know that when you change your appearance the way that Natasha has, there's a reason for it. She tries not to leap to assumptions, but tucks it away in the back of her mind.

Giving a surprised and amused laugh, Peggy finds that her fond smile is easy to rouse. "It's strange how very little to do there is, when your typical day involves toppling down a communist regime and their spies." Best to get to the awkward part of this, mainly to explain why Peggy is being so free with her information.

"It's good to see you again, Agent Romanoff."

[iwasrussian]

It just so happens that Peggy's answer is right in line with her thoughts about the place that's abducted her. Sure, it's only been a day, but there isn't much hope of things getting better going forward and Natasha is doing her best not to focus on that. Still, it's the proverbial elephant in the room that she's simply going to have to learn to walk around.

Her smile widens a little, making it more obvious and friendly. Natasha nods, "And it's nice to finally have the chance to meet you, Agent Carter. I would have hoped for better circumstances but it seems those are.. unavoidable."

There was more she could have added but there was no need to add more awkward. So instead, the spy gestures to the seat opposite.

"Care for some company?"

[womanofvalue]

"I don't know that there are better circumstances, as I'm sure when I was still at my fighting prime, you were barely even born," she quips, but there's a warmth to it, a praise of Natasha's seeming youth. She knows the woman is overly skilled and talented and that in a fight, there's few people she'd want with her as much as she does this one.

"I'd love it," she says. "You can ask me whatever you'd like, I'm an open book to you. More of a history one, I fear, but I can still try and be relevant, at least to offer you a glimpse at me and not simply a story of who I am."

Woods

[pretendtoneedme]

It's a hunting day, and not only that, but a goddamn we need more weapons day. He'd made a bunch of bows a few months before, and not all of them had died, but the ones that hadn't were definitely starting to show the wear. Lack of proper supplies to keep the wood sealed had taken their toll when paired with a wet winter and so far not exactly a dry spring, and so Clint's been on the lookout for more yew or oak trees with suitable branches to steal from while he's been out hunting for the past couple of weeks. It's not easy to find proper wood for a long-lasting bow at the best of times; at the moment he's mostly relying on luck to get him what he needs, because how else is he going to find it?

But hunting is also one of the main things he has to accomplish, and that's why he's up a tree with the best bow he made last year and a quiver of (also personally made) arrows at his back. He'd found some trees near the game trails that could act as hunting blinds last year and was careful to leave all of them alone when scrounging firewood; at the moment he was up one, seated carefully in what was more or less a natural fork of the wood and several branches, about as comfortable as he could be and watching for anything worth shooting. There's a flash out of the corner of his eye and he instinctively turns to it, ducking a bit to see around a clump of leaves - was that a leg? That kind of looked like a boot, but it had vanished behind a bush before he could be totally sure. Was something going on? With everything that'd been happening lately, Clint's on high alert for the residents to be fucked with yet again, and if that brief flash is a person trying to stay out of sight there's a good chance something new is happening.

And if there is, he wants to see what it is, hence him throwing the bow over his head and shoulder, not bothering to unstring it, and beginning to climb down the tree, being as quiet as he possibly can. If it's not a person, there's no sense in alerting them to his presence. Even if it is a person, he wants to see what's going on first; there's a lot of people he can think of that he doesn't want to have find him before he finds them.

[iwasrussian]

Though Natasha hadn't yet seen his face to know who he was, it was his movement that had her changing positions in an attempt to see him before he saw her. It was, after all, about the right time for the guy she punched in the face to spread the word there was some psycho blonde out in the woods who broke his nose. Even though she didn't. Or, at least she didn't think she did.

It was entirely possible.

She moves quickly and almost silently, Natasha's eyes darting between the ground to mind where she was stepping and the immediate area to locate threats or places to duck out of sight. That's when she saw the motion in her periphery moments before disappearing behind a large bush. And even despite her foreign surroundings, there was something very familiar about this chase. Only the Russian wasn't going to trust that feeling.

So she listened and waited.

[pretendtoneedme]

If she'd broken someone's nose, it wouldn't be the first time someone got hurt getting out of the fountain. Hell, it wouldn't be the first time someone got hurt getting someone else out of the fountain. Considering that no one, at least so far, had been dumped into the fountain expecting to be underwater, panic tended to be the first reaction of any new arrival, and sometimes they took it out on other people. Clint wouldn't blame her for that, though he'd hope she broke the nose of someone who deserved it versus someone who didn't.

But for the moment all of that is inconsequential, as Clint waits behind a tree for ...something. Anything. He saw movement, he knows he did; if someone's hiding from him, it implies they have something to be frightened of, but nothing's chasing them. Everything he can hear in the area is perfectly normal, birds trilling and insects chirping or buzzing around, not a hint of anything lurking. Aside from the clunky humans, at least.

There's a long pause, a good handful of minutes, before he moves again - because someone has to and it might as well be him, considering he's armed with both an active bow and his throwing knives. Swinging the bow into a proper grasp, he edges just enough around the tree to take aim in the direction he saw the flash of a person go, and calls out, "Someone there?"

[iwasrussian]

During those minutes, Natasha considers her next move and is about to make it when she hears the movement again. What she is quick to decide is that this is definitely a person and not an animal and they are hunting her just as much as she is hunting them. And she needs to be better given she has no weapons on her other than what she is without them.

She moves once more, from the bush to a tree with a large trunk and if Clint sees her move, he'll only catch the dark black of her scrubs and the white of her platinum hair. At least until he speaks. Nat remains behind the tree deliberating quickly on whether she trusts that's really her partner's voice. It certainly sounds like him, but it was only less than an hour before that she arrived. Finally, she decides to confirm it for him.

"That depends," she called back.

Seeing as she wasn't sure what was going on, Natasha had every right to be skeptical of even Clint. Especially if the KGB had anything to do with this and she hadn't been there long enough to decide yes or no on that.

[pretendtoneedme]

In contrast to Nat, Clint's reaction to that voice is surprise - and then relief. "Nat?" he calls (kind of stupidly, since they're both being uber-cautious about this), but he's had experience both in this village and at home with voices sounding similar. There is such a thing as human error, after all, but even with that caution the tension goes out of his shoulders, even if he doesn't actually drop the bow or put the arrow back in his quiver. He does, however, step out from behind his tree, bow still available but not quite at the ready, his sharp eyes catching sight of that flash of unnatural black where there should be none on a fairly sunny day.

But final confirmation is always good, and for that, he switches to Russian. "What's the one thing I guard with my life above anything else?" She's the only one who knows the answer to that question that also speaks Russian, so she's the only one who can answer in this circumstance.

[fwips]

Peter is beginning to think he needs to amend his timetable.

It's been about a month since he came sputtering out of the fountain, and there hasn't been nearly as much progress as he thought there might be. 'Might' is the operative word there, of course — Even at the beginning, dripping wet and reeling from apparently being expendable, he'd only been operating on theories. There hasn't been much he can prove, scientifically speaking.

Not that he minds it here, really. People are super nice, even if it seems like half them feel compelled to mother him to some degree. This doesn't seem to happen to Lyanna; maybe it's because she's got some of her actual family here. He probably shouldn't complain, anyway. It's the sort of thing that would make May feel better if she knew about it.

But back to the point: He might be here a really long time, or at least what seems like a really long time. On the one hand, this gives him plenty of time to work on proving those theories, right? Silver lining right there. But on the other, he kinda misses concrete under his feet and still doesn't know how anybody falls asleep around here with all the crickets.

Presently, he's seated at a table downstairs at the inn, which is where he lives now, crazy as that is to think about, and he's got a pen and a little bit of paper that Karen lady gave him. Biting against his bottom lip, he scratches something out and then adds a line in block letters as tiny as he can get them. He's still got his bottom lip caught between his teeth when he looks up and then stills, staring.

"You're blonde now," he blurts out, smooth as ever.

[iwasrussian]

Most of the time, Natasha doesn't abide by any sort of personal boundaries. What they don't know won't hurt them and what she gleans is only ever for herself. Most times. Okay, rarely. If there's a person that strikes her interest, she will do her homework on them and it only took a quick chat with her old friend Happy Hogan to find out the identity of the guy who joined them in Leipzig.

From there the rest was easy.

She stops and looks at the kid, recalling the face to a small thumbnail photo attached to a school file and turns to face him.

"Peter Parker," Natasha says, moving over to where he sits. "I didn't recognize you out of your red and blue spandex."

[fwips]

"Uh, yeah," Peter replies, watching as she steps closer. Idiotically, all he can think of is Flash and that time he said he had a hot date with her. He's pretty sure that hot date or not, Flash would pass out at the sight of this woman.

"I mean, except obviously you did because—" Peter flops a hand in a vague gesture. "Anyway. Yeah, it didn't come through with me. I don't know why." The whole identical outfits thing makes sense to a point, he thinks, particularly if Thanos is just tossing them all in here and taking away anything that could help them get out, but mostly he just hopes his suit isn't gone forever.

"It's not spandex."

[iwasrussian]

Hearing that was disappointing. Even if she hadn't come through with her own suit, or any of her weapons, there was a tinge of hope that there was visual confirmation that it wouldn't be impossible to get them back. Then again, Clint had already filled her in on most of what this place was all about.

"You sure about that? Looked pretty form-fitting to me." she teased with an ever so serious face.

Natasha takes a quick look around before sitting down across from him.

"So, let's talk. Tell me what you were doing before you got here."

[fwips]

"Mr. Stark made me a new one, it's nano technology," Peter replies, just as soberly. He thinks she might be joking, but it's really hard to tell if she's joking, and he's pretty sure if he tried to joke back he'd be way, way out of his depth. Better to just answer and move on.

"Um, I was on Titan. You remember the big donut ships? I ended up on one of those with Mr. Stark and a wizard, and Mr. Stark decided to not turn around, I guess because the wizard had one of the stones and he was trying to keep Thanos away from Earth or something? I didn't really catch it all, they argued a lot. Then we met some people who looked like they were from Star Wars and a guy who liked Footloose, and we actually had a really good plan to get the gauntlet from Thanos, and it almost worked." He pulls in a breath, his eyes dropping as he pushes it slowly back out. "I was so close to getting it all the way off. But the Footloose guy went crazy and then Thanos disappeared." He glances up again, expression pinched. "I guess you know what happened next. And then I was here."

[beallmysins]

New people usually get some attention, even if it's only to notice they've come in dripping and go back to your own shit but this one gets a doubletake. She's blonde, she's damn good looking and the scrubs do her more favors than they'd do most people.

"Damn. I should start doing fountain duty if it's going to keep dropping off women like you," Jax says, giving her an easy once over. "Been a while since we've gotten anyone that looks like you."

[iwasrussian]

Sure, it was a pathetic attempt at flattery, but Natasha wasn't in any mood to play with it like she normally would. He obviously recognizes her as someone new but he's the first person she's run into and frankly, he took her by surprise.

No sooner than he finishes, she walks over casually. As soon as she's close enough, her fist connects with his nose and in another blink, Natasha has him on the ground with her knee pressed into his chest a hand clamped on his throat.

"Where am I?"

[beallmysins]

Jax hadn't expected the crazy bitch to punch him in the face and so he's still wheezing with her atop him when his ears try to figure out what the fuck she just asked him. All he says is a goddamn hello and this is what she does? What the absolute fuck is going on?

"If you'll get your fucking hand off my throat I'll tell you what I know," Jax says, teeth bared. "Goddamn."

[iwasrussian]

That was more than a hello, to her. She might have played with him a little bit before showing her disapproval of his approach.

"You're talking just fine now," she replies, glancing up quickly to see if anyone was watching or passing by.

[beallmysins]

“Might have a little more to say if I wasn’t flat on my ass,” Jax wheezes. “Tend to be in a better mood when I’m not being attacked. This method work for you a lot?”

Judging by her strength as she pins him down, Jax thinks this method probably works a hell of a lot for her but he doesn’t want to admit she’s right.