sixthiterationlogs | arrival and exploring

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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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She needs the hug, she really does. It's been a long time. Even longer since the two of them were standing on the same side.

"Earlier today, yeah. Came out of a well. No idea where I came out of, though." Because yes, she checked. "Nothing down there now. Did you get a... survival pack?" That's what she's calling it, and she shuffles her shoulder in a way that bumps the backpack she's wearing. "How long have you been here? Where is here?"

They'd always been on the same side. They'd always been friends. She hadn't hit him hard enough for that, considering she hadn't hit him hard at all. And neither had he, which even Wanda had noticed. But even when she'd first called him to tell him about Ross showing up and the whole mess with the Accords, though he'd never planned on signing it, he could more than easily see her point and hadn't disagreed with her conclusions. Even with how things had escalated, she was the only one he hadn't been irritated with or just flat-out pissed off at. They just knew each other too well.

"You tried to dive down again, didn't you." Because of course she did. The only reason he hadn't was because he arrived in January, in the middle of a cold snap, and not getting hypothermia was a more pressing concern. Other people telling him of the multiple attempts to find any sort of passage down there had convinced him not to try it again for a long time. "The backpack? Yeah, even though it's pretty light on the 'survival' gear. There's some stuff here for that, and people are good about pitching together and helping out, so it's not as dire as you think it is."

Still pretty dire. But at least they had first aid kits and people willing to do what's needed to help others.

"Months now - since midwinter." Clint sighs as he looks up, checking the time by the setting sun - there's no calendars in the village, no way to know what date it is or even really what month, but the days seem roughly about equal with the nights now and so it's possible to make an educated guess as to the date and time. "You haven't eaten, right? Come on, it's about time for dinner, we can get something in you and I can explain while we walk. We don't know enough yet. We don't have ways of finding out enough. We can't get out of here and there's no technology for us to rip apart and spy on. It's... been a challenge."

Nat should know that tone: he's been keeping himself busy with projects and meeting people and trying to form some alliances. He's been trying not to think about home, and his family. Falling back into "agent" mode, which can still be very much a normal man, but focused on completing a job above all else so he can move on.

She just gives him a look that says of course she tried to dive down. Of course she did. This is Natasha. Isn't it obvious? It's so nice to be around someone who can just read her again.

When he tries to get her to come away for dinner, though, she hesitates. "What does that mean here? Time for dinner. Something communal?" She can be around Clint, doesn't need to turn herself around any special way to trust him, but she's not sure she can handle other people right now. She wants to talk, though. She wants to walk and talk, get the lay of the land from him, have him inject a little bit of sense into her day.

"I've seen Peggy. I got a little bit of a run down from her. It was-- jarring, trying to reconcile so much lost time. If it's even my time."

The look he returns, with a small shrug, is absolutely no different. 'Of course I tried to dive down.' 'Yeah, of course you did.' They've got at least four different languages they can converse in, but that's not counting the ways they don't have to talk at all a lot of the time.

Her hesitation in wanting to be around people isn't unexpected, but she's gonna need to eat at some point and she should at least know how she could get food since there just isn't all that much around. It's not like she can walk into an Aldi's or a Fareway and walk out with a sub. "It can be, or something at the house, if you've got one. There's not a lot of food available, so people tend to share what there is. Sam, Wanda, and I are sharing a house off on the north end of town and most of the time we feed outselves, but the people who manage the inn and pub also pull together meals for people who don't know how to get their own food. Me and some other people go hunting, but we're in that period where there's just not a lot of game out there since winter just ended." And it doesn't matter that he doesn't miss what he aims at when there's just nothing to aim at. They're surviving, but rations are all a bit shorter right now thanks to that and the stored produce beginning to run out. Thank god planting's around the corner. "We've got a couple of spare rooms, too, if you wanna grab one of them. It's a good defensible position, not too far away from everything but out of the direct line of fire from most buildings."

Because of course he considered that when choosing a house.

Still, even Sam and Wanda might be too much for her right now. Wanda didn't show up until after she was gone before, thankfully, but Sam's been there awhile and definitely spent time with Nat when she was as well. Sam's a very calm and restful person most of the time, at least, and he'd definitely done better with Clint showing up (again?) than Thor had. Clint sighs, raising a hand to scratch at the back of his head. "Yeah, that I can't tell you. They said I was here before, too, for a few weeks, and I don't remember it at all. I was only here for a few days before you blinked out last time."

"Blinked out," she repeats. No. It doesn't sit well with her at all, and she shakes her head. "I can't handle a bunch of strangers right now, and I definitely can't handle Wanda and Sam." The sting of her first introduction to the girl may never fade completely, and last she saw of Sam, they were on opposite sides of the same fight. It hurts. More than she should let it, but that doesn't make it so easy to turn off. "You can go eat. I'll stay here." In fact, she's already moving toward the empty mill, prepared to wait it out. "You can come back when you're finished." There's nothing she could find while exploring that would give her more information right now than talking to Clint. "Just don't say anything. Peggy knows I'm here. She thinks I remember being here, but that it's fuzzy. Don't tell anyone else."

"Blinked out." Not that she needs the confirmation, but there it is. "I'm guessing that's what happened to me- the other me - fuck it, him, too. You- her and me, we had rooms next to each other at the inn, she helped me get settled and get towels and stuff when I got here, then I didn't see her at breakfast one morning. When I opened the door, she was gone, and her stuff with her." It's just easier on the brain think of and refer to the... copies?... of themselves as other people. Neither of them likes the idea of missing memories and what that implies. Thankfully he hadn't been there all that long with Nat before so there's not much to get mixed up in that manner, but there was still that urge to refer to things they'd talked about and it was... not a good thing to focus on the possibility of someone messing with their minds when they don't have a way to get back at them or find out more information for themselves.

But at her statements, Clint shakes his head, because nope, he's not putting up with that. "Nuh-uh, you've been walking around all day, you gotta eat. I won't make you go in, but come on and I'll show you where to get everything. You can slip in after people are gone and pick some stuff up, then go where you want. But you gotta be careful wandering around the woods here, there's... things. Kind of dangerous things, sometimes."

"You're not my father," she tells him, though on better days she definitely enjoys pointing out that he's old enough that he technically could be. Not with much of a margin, but a dig is a dig. Today, however, she does not want to be babied. Or the Clint and Natasha version of babying, which is really not all that tender.

Though, she does allow that he's right about her needing to eat. "You can show me which building it is, and you can go in and get food, if you elaborate a whole lot on 'kind of dangerous things' while we walk there. Because that is not at all helpful, and you know it. It's possible I'm in shock, yes, but that's not going to go away if you pull your punches, I'll just be ill informed."

Only technically. He would've been one of the youngest fathers ever if he really was her father. And that would've been fucking creepy.

But still, he's got truthful answer for that. "Nah, I'm your partner, and partners do things like stop each other from refusing to eat if there's a chance. Come on, it's not that far." Partners are supposed to prevent Dumb Shit. There's always a lot of other Dumb Shit going on with them anyway, so it really is best to minimize it as much as possible. Clint disappears back inside the mill for a moment to grab his tool kit, which only takes a few seconds, and picks up the mug he'd been drinking from before turning and heading heading back the way Nat had come, over the bridge.

"I meant exactly that - 'kind of dangerous things.' We don't know how we got here or what we're doing here, other than surviving. And sometimes things that can hurt you show up." He knows she'll keep up, both physically and mentally, but there's just so much unknown about this situation that it's hard to know where to start. Well, start with what he's experienced personally. "There was a... an infestation of what we thought were fireflies a couple weeks ago, but they could bite you and get you sick, fever and delusions. Sam and I both got it, Wanda and Peggy didn't. Before that it was lightning, and a guy was struck head on and died. Before I got here, a girl was killed by a 'beast,' something that was like a wolf but walked on two legs and was a lot bigger. A group hunted it down and killed it, but then the corpse just vanished overnight."

They could have been from Alabama. Babies having babies. There's a reality television show in there somewhere, she's told him before. Now doesn't seem like the right time to go down that line, though.

"So monsters? Monsters in the woods, is what you're telling me? Perfect." She screws her face up in displeasure, but she troops along after him. It's something to focus on. "Nothing to get the appetite going like fucking monsters." Still, she'll eat if he brings her food. She's antsy and out of sorts, she's not stupid. They have a job to do, even though no one has given it to them. There are people here, and she assumes that not all of them "How often do things like that come around? Any sort of pattern, do you think?"

That's just Sixteen and Pregnant.

(He's truly, magnificently ashamed to know the title of that show, what it's about, and some of its major "stars." He sometimes hates how his mind collects little scraps of information to throw at him with the least provocation.)

"Only kind of pattern I've noticed is that the further out you go, the more likely you are to find... something. We can't get out - we can get to the boundaries, but they change every day. You can't make a map because where there's a cliff one day, there's trees the next. You try and climb the cliffs, you get knocked back by wind, or the rock crumbles under you, or something shows up to chase you off. I asked Thor if this was Asgardian tech or something he recognized, and he said no. It's not Loki." After all, as Thor pointed out, Loki would have revealed himself by now in order to revel over his captives. He always would be a drama queen. "The closer you stick the village, the less you'll see of that kind of crap. The only time something came right in that I know of was that beast and the girl it dragged off and killed."

"And you trust him to be completely straightforward with us when it comes to his brother? We both know how messed up that family is." Yes, it's utterly hilarious that Natasha is calling someone else out on being a lying mess with family issues. Moving right along. "We also don't know what Loki can actually get his hands on. Asgard isn't the only place something world changing could come from. We are bottom of the ladder in the universal scheme of things. Though I suppose, if no one has seen Loki yet... never met an idiot more in love with the sound of their own voice."

"Straightforward enough to not just take being locked up in here if it was his brother doing it. Thor knows what he can do and he wouldn't put up with that shit, not when there's way too much other stuff going on." For all that Clint will never forgive Loki (which Nat well knows), he can - reluctantly - understand why Thor's more willing to think sort of well of him. A few centuries of familihood kind of gives you a history that you don't want to forget. But he'd accepted that his brother had become a bad person willing to destroy things to get what he wanted, and there was no erasing that. "He also said he can't feel any trace of any of the Stones around or anything kind of mystical like that, but he's not the magician in the family so he might just not be able to tell." But if Thor couldn't tell, Clint and Nat had no way in hell of knowing themselves, being baseline human with no added "powers."

"Stuff here's dialed back anyway. Anyone with powers - Wanda, Thor, some others I met here - they can't do anywhere near as much as they can back home. Seems like it's about one-fourth of their normal levels, so that puts us on a more even playing field with the people in here at least."

Natasha sighs, runs a hand through her hair. "Tell me... something good. Anything." She's not begging, she's not. She just wants to hear one thing that will give her a little bit of hope. One thing other than the fact that Clint is here with her, because that already gives her hope. They can handle anything together. If there's one thing she's certain of in her life, it's that.

Not that her certainties have been panning out, lately.

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arrival and exploring

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