milliways_bar | (no subject)

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(no subject)

It's been A Day.

Or, to be more accurate, A Night. When Agent Romanoff had requested a transfer into Linguistics, she'd been under the - clearly mistaken - impression that her days would be filled with languages, not lock picks and lasers. Laser beams. Not guns. Stark still can't get those working.

(She wouldn't object to a lightsaber, though.)

When she walks into Milliways, she's wearing civvies and she's in the process of unpinning her hair. That Milliways appears makes her pause, but only for a moment. Chocolate. Dinner. Possibly some beer, because sure, she can't get drunk, but she appreciates the taste.

If anything, she glances longer at her gauntlets before shrugging. They are mostly hidden by her yellow leather jacket and this is Milliways. They aren't even the close to being the weirdest thing someone has worn.

(Today's earrings: none. Yesterday's had a tricky clasp she couldn't be bothered fiddling with and the piercings can survive until she gets home.)

She strolls over to the Bar, orders a spiked hot chocolate from Molly, and then moves off into the bar-proper towards the fireplace. She doesn't sit on the couch – too much of invitation for people to talk to her – but claims a nearby table where she can still watch the fish.

Well.

The intent was to claim the table. In practice, she has to straighten the damn thing and brush off a chair and then straighten the rest of the chairs...

[ooc: Main thread is plotlocked, but feel free to post reactions here if you want!]

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He wouldn't say he's avoiding Steve, precisely; if he were, he wouldn't be here at all, yesterday or today or ever, promise or no promise. But there are things that he doesn't want Steve to know he's involved in, and besides that, the idea of his best friend walking in on him now in the middle of sparring or weapons practice --

-- no. Best to avoid that, and thanks to Jay, he has another option. He'd come in at first light (in the time zone where he currently is, anyway), and had gone straight down to work. It's a while before he comes back up, and when he does, he's wearing black mission gear, including several knives concealed in various places, and a black windbreaker to hide the steel of his arm. He'll have to pick up his rifle and a couple of pistols on the other side of the door before he goes in search of his next target, but otherwise he's ready.

That illusion lasts for less than two seconds, once he casts a swift scan over the room. James spots her, and goes utterly still.

She's alive. He knew that, of course, with the intel he's been gathering, but knowing it and seeing the proof of it are completely different things. In any case, that's not the point. The point is that she's not only alive, she's here, and from the pieces of his past that he's starting to recall, he's damn sure that Steve doesn't know the full background of his red-haired partner; doesn't know that she could very well be a double agent, could be a sleeper, could be...

... he can't risk it. He can't risk Steve. He can't.

Cursing himself for a fool in every language he knows, he uses all his skill to fade into the crowd until he's able to circle around the room. He gets as close to her as he can unseen, then steps forward, into sight.

"Natalia Alianovna." His tone is low and dangerously controlled. "What are you doing here?"

She'd been in the process of turning around, cup of hot chocolate in hand, when a man steps out from the crowd.

She recognizes the threat. Not him, although something about that swagger and black leather and shaggy hair pokes her memory, but his intentions. Swagger and control and just how good he had to have been for her not to spot her - yeah, she knows that. She knows what it means.

That is all processed between one breath and the next, which is a good thing, because his actual words freeze her next breath in her ribs.

Natalia Alianovna.

"Um," she says, staring at him in the confused fear of a civilian, "who are you? I mean, I think that's the more pertinent question here."

"Oh, you're good."

There's lethal anger beginning to simmer under his words, open suspicion in the flat stare he's leveling at her.

It's easier to be angry than to let himself feel the pain, or sorrow, or any of the rest that's trying to push its way through.

He'd loved her, once; he remembers that now, too.

"But then, you always were, weren't you?"

Well, she thinks, this is getting awkward.

Her eyes sweep over him, darting as if frightened, and there is the slightest pause on the flash of metal at his left hand.

Oh.

Fuck.

"Way better than you, Alex, so I think it'd be a good idea if you just stepped back, okay?" Her voice is still frightened, low and breathy, but her eyes are much steadier now.

Steadier and flat.

"Not a chance in hell."

He sets his left hand on the back of a chair nearby, casually gripping the top slat--

--or not so casually, judging by the deliberate tightness of his grip, the way he scrapes his palm hard across the wood.

Alex. He knows, now, where that cover was from; where that name was from.

Damn him, damn her, damn the whole entire world that made them what they are, and which then twisted them and led them to this moment.

"You know better than that."

In deliberate contrast, she leans back against the table and brings her cup up to her mouth. Then she pauses, as if struck by a thought.

"Right. Of course. You never have any choice in how you follow out orders. It really must be very reassuring to believe that.

Unless there are no orders here, and you're just pissed off at me for...some reason."

A verbal jab, just as deliberate as her nonchalance - jab, poke, feint, try and see where he's thinking and what he remembers. She can think of a few reasons why he'd be angry at her, but it'd be nice to know which ones he is actually operating under.

The sudden silence that gathers around him seethes with unspoken fury as her jab goes home.

"No orders," he agrees. "Not here. Not now."

Not anymore.

"And you, Natasha? What are your orders, these days?"

"Keep my head down. Do paperwork. Hand in reports. Don't provoke INTERPOL.

That last one is actually really annoying."

"Don't."

Deadly flat - but that simmering anger is back, edged with dark pain.

"Don't you fucking lie to me, Natasha. Don't you dare."

"Don't... dare?"

The pauses are delicate around the words, and she's arching her eyebrows.

"Don't dare? Who do you think you are, Alex? Last time we crossed paths, you shot me.

And guess what? You didn't have to."

"No."

A beat.

"But you're alive, aren't you?"

She flinches as that barb strikes home, and then her mouth curves with contempt.

"You didn't answer my question, darling. You can't even be fucked shooting me properly, so why should I give you anything?

Who do you think you are to try and tell me what to do?"

"Who am I?"

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes."

Hard and flat -- and this time with a cold emptiness that's more dangerous than any rage could ever be.

"You're my friend."

"I'm the Winter Soldier. And I'm going to carry out my mission."

It doesn't occur to him to specify what that mission is, nor its specific parameters; not here, not now. He shoves the chair hard to the side and takes a single step forward.

"Still doesn't-" the chair scrapes across the floorboards and she throws her cup of hot chocolate at him. Possibly, that's when she should have screamed for Security, but, well...

That's never been how Natalia Alianovna has reacted.

She braces herself against the table and kicks a chair at him, and uses the energy to spring off in the opposite direction.

Cocoa splashes across his chest, but his gear protects him from any possible burns. He ducks his head to the right and smashes the stool aside with his left arm, then goes after her.

He has to know; has to be sure. He can't remember what happened to divide them before, he can't risk it --

-- even as he thinks it, he cuts to the side, keeping himself between her and the front door.

"No orders," Natasha says, circling around and taking some steps back. "Not here. Not now."

Her voice - already naturally low - deepens, the cadence mimicking his.

"Now who's the liar?"

"Not lying," he snaps, stalking after her.

"This mission? Is mine."

"Wow."

Her voice is flat.

"You seriously need some better hobbies. Have you tried rock-climbing?"

She can take him. She knows she can. But the odds aren't how she'd like them, not with his arm. So she backs up, and backs up, and then darts around a table to kick it into him before running again.

She needs space.

She also needs something more ranged than her gauntlets.

He knocks the table up and to the side, smashing it against the wall.

(Fortunately, the patrons who were sitting between it and the wall have already bolted for safety.)

James takes a split second to rip the windbreaker off and discard it; he needs every bit of advantage he's got, and can't risk the fabric tangling in the plates of his arm.

In the next second he's moving forward again, this time more quickly.

"God damn it, Natasha, don't do this!"

She swings herself over a couch by the fire, rolls forward, takes off her jacket and grabs one of the pokers. Then, very pointedly, her Widow Bites lit up.

The poker is resting against her palm, and one of the points of electricity from her gauntlets.

"Well, you're a fine one," she scoffs in Russian. Different accent to what she used in Moscow all those years ago - Volga accent, her vowels stretched distinctively. "Why should I make this easy for you?"

He doesn't say a word. Hope dies within him; he only realizes that's what it was when dull lead settles into the pit of his stomach.

I'm sorry, Natasha.

This time he's the one to move - and when he does, he moves fast. He snatches up a chair with his right hand and slings it at her head, then ducks low and to the left, spinning and kicking out to sweep at her legs with his booted foot.

She ducks the chair only to slam straight into the sweep of his boot. She falls back, hard, but she's already moving, drawing her legs up underneath herself and wielding the electrified poker like a baton. If he tries to go her while she's getting her balance, then she can hit him.

She doesn't want to get too close - she knows what that arm can do - but if he remembers enough of her to hate her, then he'll remember what her gauntlets can do to his arm (and to the rest of him) if she touches him. And she has to get close enough to touch him to get out of this. So once she's going her legs coiled underneath herself, she lunges in.

The poker slashes through the air and he jerks back, just enough to evade the blow - but he keeps himself between her and the front door.

He can't let her get away until he knows, and he won't be able to pursue her through that door, more than likely. Which means he's got to stop her here; to bring her down, whatever it takes.

Here's one thing that generations of spies, mercenaries and other agents of chaos in their world have been raised with: there is a redhead in a dark catsuit who will fuck your shit up.

He flinches back and she gets to her feet before dancing in again. She doesn't want him to grab her (not with that arm of his) but then, it's not as if grabbing her is a particularly good idea either, and she presses that sliver of an advantage for all its worth.

It's the only one she has.

"You're this angry at me, sweetheart?" she murmurs, still in Russian. "Whatever happened to just calling me up in the middle of the night and yelling?"

She lunges forward again on the second last word, decades of dance classes making sure her voice doesn't change as she moves. But as she lunges, she switches the poker to her other hand to try and catch him if he avoids her.

He doesn't respond to her question; not this time, not now.

Calling her up? Had he been able to - did he once know how to --

She shifts the poker, and all thoughts fall away as he takes advantage of the instant's break in motion to move forward and meet her.

His right arm goes up to block as he drives forward with his left, toward the center of her body.